Cocos Island or Turks and Caicos or other?

[Satrekker]

My non-diving spouse is going to visit her family for little while out of the country, so I have an opportunity to do some extended diving. I'm looking at a liveaboard, since it is not something that I would consider for both me and my wife. This would be my first one, and I can do a week or longer. Preliminary research has me considering Turks and Caicos or Cocos Island off Costa Rica. Both trips are with Aggressor, and the Cocos trip is longer due to travel time, but that's not a big deal. I'll be travelling the 3rd week of August and returning around the end of the month. I'm AOW/nitrox and comfortable in a variety of conditions. Budget is not really a limiting factor, but I'd like to stay under $4k or so, unless it's something extra special like Galapagos (that trip will be later this year or next year after dry suit training). Any thoughts or suggestions on these or other locations?

 

[Stoo]

Turks and Caicos LOB is really nice, but be aware that August is peak hurricane season. We dove there the week after Hurricane Irene a few years ago and the vis was terrible.

Cocos on the other hand, at least from what I know, is one of those bucket list trips that has the potential to be off-the-charts awesome.

Having said that, I haven't done the Cocos trip... ;-)

 

[Satrekker]

Turks and Caicos LOB is really nice, but be aware that August is peak hurricane season. We dove there the week after Hurricane Irene a few years ago and the vis was terrible.

Cocos on the other hand, at least from what I know, is one of those bucket list trips that has the potential to be off-the-charts awesome.

Having said that, I haven't done the Cocos trip... ;-)

Doh, I live in FL and never gave hurricane season a second thought. Cocos it'll be then unless I hear a better option.

 

[drrich2]

Trip report Cocos Island on Underseahunter's M/V Argo, 2-12 Nov from 2016.
Cocos Island trip review with Aggressor Okeanos, Sept 6-16th, 2015
Cocos Island On MV Argo
Cocos Island is an interest of mine, but never been. Thought others trip reports might help. What led you to narrow it down to those 2 destinations? Did you consider or rule out the Socorros for any reason? (I'm guessing you like sharks & big stuff?).
How far in advance do Cocos trips book up?
Richard.

 

[Trailboss123]

My non-diving spouse is going to visit her family for little while out of the country, so I have an opportunity to do some extended diving. I'm looking at a liveaboard, since it is not something that I would consider for both me and my wife. This would be my first one, and I can do a week or longer. Preliminary research has me considering Turks and Caicos or Cocos Island off Costa Rica. Both trips are with Aggressor, and the Cocos trip is longer due to travel time, but that's not a big deal. I'll be travelling the 3rd week of August and returning around the end of the month. I'm AOW/nitrox and comfortable in a variety of conditions. Budget is not really a limiting factor, but I'd like to stay under $4k or so, unless it's something extra special like Galapagos (that trip will be later this year or next year after dry suit training). Any thoughts or suggestions on these or other locations?

Something to consider: Cocos is way more advanced diving than Turks and Caicos. By advanced, I mean much more advanced than simply having an advanced open water certification, unless one is comfortable and has adequate experience in strong surge and currents, comfortable if separated from buddy or dive guide and able to confidently deploy a surface marker buoy from depth while diving solo; comfortable in deep open water situations with bottom depths well below recreational limits. I would not hesitate to do a Caribbean liveaboard in August. Turks and Caicos or Caymans. Cocos and Socorros should be on your bucket list, just make sure you have the requisite experience level to make it worth it, enjoyable and safe for you.

 

[KeithG]

Something to consider: Cocos is way more advanced diving than Turks and Caicos. By advanced, I mean much more advanced than simply having an advanced open water certification, unless one is comfortable and has adequate experience in strong surge and currents, comfortable if separated from buddy or dive guide and able to confidently deploy a surface marker buoy from depth while diving solo; comfortable in deep open water situations with bottom depths well below recreational limits. I would not hesitate to do a Caribbean liveaboard in August. Turks and Caicos or Caymans. Cocos and Socorros should be on your bucket list, just make sure you have the requisite experience level to make it worth it, enjoyable and safe for you.

Agreed. They are very different destinations.

T&C is essentially zero current. Easily done by new divers (on our last trip one of the divers more than doubled their dive count by the end of the week). The only issue is that the top of the wall is often below 50 feet so you may run into NDL or gas issues.

I believe that having a PLB would be a good idea in the Cocos.

 

[Satrekker]

Agreed. They are very different destinations.

T&C is essentially zero current. Easily done by new divers (on our last trip one of the divers more than doubled their dive count by the end of the week). The only issue is that the top of the wall is often below 50 feet so you may run into NDL or gas issues.

I believe that having a PLB would be a good idea in the Cocos.

I agree with you. One of the main reasons I chose Cocos over T&C was due to the type of diving. Though I live on the west coast of FL, my favorite diving is off of Jupiter and W. Palm. These are deeper dives with strong current - my favorite type of diving. It reminds me a bit of Cozumel as to depth and current. I'll be taking my nautilus lifeline along with my plb in a dive canister, and dsmb deployment is standard on a w. palm dive, so that's not anything new. I basically decided on Cocos because my first choice was the Galapagos, but I have yet to buy my dry suit and take a class with it. I've already taken GUE fundamentals part 1, but I won't take part two until I'm ready to do it with a drysuit and possibly doubles, and I didn't want to rush into anything in a compressed time frame.

I'm set up for a spot on the Okeanos Aggressor from August 19-29th. I'm pretty excited. :-D

 

[Satrekker]

Trip report Cocos Island on Underseahunter's M/V Argo, 2-12 Nov from 2016.
Cocos Island trip review with Aggressor Okeanos, Sept 6-16th, 2015
Cocos Island On MV Argo
Cocos Island is an interest of mine, but never been. Thought others trip reports might help. What led you to narrow it down to those 2 destinations? Did you consider or rule out the Socorros for any reason? (I'm guessing you like sharks & big stuff?).
How far in advance do Cocos trips book up?
Richard.

Initially, I was simply thinking about heading over to W. Palm and drift diving for a week or more with a few Emerald charters' shark dives sprinkled in, but after more consideration, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do a liveaboard, since it's not anything I'd ever book for both me and my wife. T&C looked like a very nice dive, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do more of a bucket list trip, but something in this hemisphere. PNG and Indonesia have some fantastic, remote sites from what I've read, but due to travel time, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me since my window is less than 14 days. I did briefly research Socorros, but Cocos seemed a bit more remote, so I went that route.

 

[Dan]

I agree with you. One of the main reasons I chose Cocos over T&C was due to the type of diving. Though I live on the west coast of FL, my favorite diving is off of Jupiter and W. Palm. These are deeper dives with strong current - my favorite type of diving. It reminds me a bit of Cozumel as to depth and current. I'll be taking my nautilus lifeline along with my plb in a dive canister, and dsmb deployment is standard on a w. palm dive, so that's not anything new. I basically decided on Cocos because my first choice was the Galapagos, but I have yet to buy my dry suit and take a class with it. I've already taken GUE fundamentals part 1, but I won't take part two until I'm ready to do it with a drysuit and possibly doubles, and I didn't want to rush into anything in a compressed time frame.

I'm set up for a spot on the Okeanos Aggressor from August 19-29th. I'm pretty excited. :-D

I did fine with 7mm wetsuit in Galapagos in December.

 

[Dan]

Trip report Cocos Island on Underseahunter's M/V Argo, 2-12 Nov from 2016.
Cocos Island trip review with Aggressor Okeanos, Sept 6-16th, 2015
Cocos Island On MV Argo
Cocos Island is an interest of mine, but never been. Thought others trip reports might help. What led you to narrow it down to those 2 destinations? Did you consider or rule out the Socorros for any reason? (I'm guessing you like sharks & big stuff?).
How far in advance do Cocos trips book up?
Richard.

I booked my next trip (Sep 17-27, 2018) to Cocos with Argo a couple months ago. It's booked up in more than a year in advance.