Cross posting from Cruise Critic:
Anthem of the Seas, 24 Jan 2023 - Booking independent dives out of 5 local dive shops -
These shops all actively seek cruise ship passengers. I've dealt with all 5 LDS, and dived on 3 of the boats (the 3 Saints). I've been weathered or rescheduled out of San Juan 3 times, but am very much hoping to get there this time. The caves on outside east of the harbor mouth have a reputation as being good. St Lucia is great for drift dives past the Pitons. St Kitts has a possibility of a full day of diving (morning and afternoon). I haven't done the west shore of Antigua, but Indigo gave me a great referral to an English Harbor operator last trip.
Hope to see you "down there",
27 Jan 2023 Port call - San Juan - Scuba Dogs - City Lights night dive at Escambron Marine Park
28 Jan 2023 Port call - St Maarten - Dive Sint Maarten (Bobby's Marina)
29 Jan 2023 Port call - Antigua - Indigo Divers Jolly Harbor
30 Jan 2023 Port call - St Lucia - Dive St Lucia (Scuba Steve's)
31 Jan 2023 Port Call - St Kitts - Pro Divers St Kitts (Auston MacLeod) (Dive currently full -- Booked with Keneth dive shop)
I just returned from 3 weeks of diving from cruise ships and I wanted to inform the folks who are traveling soon about my experience in St. Lucia with Dive Fair Helen (DFH) and another diver’s experience with Scuba Steve’s (SS). I will write a more detailed trip report soon, but the experience was so unsafe and dangerous that I wanted to warn you. I will only comment on the dive operations and not the quality of the diving and the reef in this thread.
I met a few divers during the cruise and some were diving with Dive Fair Helen and another father and 11-year-old daughter dived with Scuba Steve’s. I’ll call him Pete and the daughter Lily. The cruise ship did not offer diving, so everyone booked independently and directly with the shops. Pete gave me the account of his unsafe experience with SS. Despite being informed in the dive briefing that they would not descend as a group (12 divers and 1 guide) and to meet at the bottom of the descent line, the guide didn’t even follow his own instructions. Pete and Lily were last in the water and the guide did not wait for them at the bottom. Lily was having trouble equalizing her ears and was stuck at about 20 feet, so Pete was dealing with that and also trying to make his way horizontally in the water because the group was disappearing from sight. The guide had a buoy at the surface because of the boat traffic, and Pete was also worried about getting too far from the buoy and being at risk of a boat strike. Lily’s rental regulator was leaking, which also caused Pete some anxiety.
Eventually, they made it to the bottom and joined the group, and the rest of the dive was uneventful. He was obviously distressed about the situation and said he would not dive with them again.
My experience with DFH went down in my logbook as the most unsafe and dangerous operation I’ve ever encountered. The day started off with a 9:15 a.m. pickup at a meeting point off the ship. Little did I know that DFH was herding divers, snorkelers and kayakers in the same transport (about 18 people), and there were late-comers that caused a delayed departure. We were driven about 5 minutes from the cruise ship pier to get on the dive boat, then we went for a 30-minute boat ride to the dive shop in Marigot Bay. Then we were all sorted by activity, equipment had to be issued, some had to pay for their activity. Very time consuming and it was quite hot. There was no communication with any of us as to what was going on, and the crew were running all over the place like circus monkeys, hollering at each other, getting equipment that wasn’t on the boat and just very disorganized. It took about 45 minutes to get everything sorted. Once on the boat, it was then a 20-minute ride to the dive sites.
I’ll plug in here that I was one of the people that had to pay on site because that was in my confirmation, but others had already paid. I paid with a credit card and the lady wanted to record my driver’s license number or passport, to which I promptly said NO WAY. She said their bank required it, which I know not to be true, because this happened to me earlier this year in Grand Bahama. In the Bahamas, I just made up a fake number. In St. Lucia, she wanted to see my license and record the number. When I told her no, she said, “Then we have a problem.” I agreed. “We do have a problem,” especially since I wasn’t informed of this procedure when I booked. That took about 10 minutes to sort out and I won that battle.
It took from 9:15 to 11:30 a.m. to get in the water. It was quite evident that the staff had no clue how a dive operation worked, because there was no real dive briefing. It was more like a Q&A between the divers and the guide. The dive locations were “in the marine park” but he could not name the sites. Are we descending together or meeting at the bottom? What’s the dive plan? The divers had to extract the information from the guide.
When I did my giant stride to enter the water, I heard the engines fire up and the boat started to move towards me. Scared the s** out of me, and I don’t know why they would do something so stupid and dangerous.
Coming to the surface started another round with the circus. We were 4 divers, the captain, the guide, and one deckhand. I was first to the ladder, and the deckhand was oblivious to the divers coming up because he was on the phone not even looking in our direction. I held up my camera so he could take it first, said “hello” a couple of times to get his attention, but no response. The dive guide finally called out to him.
After the dives, we had to pick up 4 snorkelers at another location, and we did not go back to the ship. Instead, we went to the dive shop to drop off tanks and for them to clean out the boat of dive gear. That’s a 20-minute ride to the shop and another 15 minutes wasted at the dive shop, and 30 minutes back to the ship.
Just when I thought this fiasco of a day was going to end without a hitch, then the debarkation was the next round of the circus clowns on full display. We were taken to a different point than where we started in the morning, which happened to be right next to the ship, which you’ll see in the background of the pictures attached.
There was a boat in the spot we were supposed to park in and that boat wouldn’t move, so we sidled alongside that boat, tied up to it, and had to get off our boat, step up about 3 feet to the next boat, climb over two cable lines (lifelines in boat lingo, I think), step down into their boat, walk across, step up out of their boat onto the dock which was another climb over two cable lines, and walk sideways to get enough footing to step onto land. The photos show an older woman snorkeler getting off the boat. This would have been a great place for a drop-off if they had been able to execute a smooth debarkation. I got back on the ship at 4:00 p.m.
Another safety hazard on this boat is a 4- to 6-inch step down on the walking surface of the boat. It was all painted the same white color, so there was no way to even see it was there, and every person tripped at least once while walking around. I’ve never been on a dive boat that had such a bad design as to have a small transition step that was a tripping hazard.
If you book with either SS or DFH, be warned that they don’t care about diver safety. Take extra caution. But for me, I will never dive with DFH again.
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