Live aboard rental gear - trust worthy?

[poifromthebag]

Because I'm lucky to get 1-2 dive outings per year, I don't any of my own gear except mask/fins/snorkle/3mm wetsuit. So I'll have to rent all the other gear. I wondering about with the maintenance and reliability of the rental equipment on a live aboard. I'm looking for suggestions what to do. I normally dive in Hawaii/Mexico during family vacations (I'm the only one certified) so I just rent equipment there.

Advice?

For various reasons, this will be my first live-aboard, and because of family situation may be last for a very long time. I'm over 50 and I will be going solo because no one else in my family dives. I'm for California, and I am a sporadic recreational diver who has primarily done boat dives in Hawaii, Mexico, Caribbean; but only the "nearby" locations (because family time).

I'm looking for a live-aboard that:

• tropical waters, sea life, great vis, not stressful
• doing LOB to access places less touched by land based, otherwise I'd rather just stay at a resort (this is an option too)
• comfortable live aboard, reliable, but I don't need luxury
• prefer asian (thaland, bali, etc) country because I want to tack on some land time outside of the live aboard time
  

 

[Quikster]

Don’t have any experience myself, but the gear and your experience is their livelihood, just like any other dive shop but even more so as they won’t just be seeing you for 1-2 dives but for several days. So they should maintain a good set so it doesn’t reflect poorly on them

 

[Damselfish]

Quality of rental gear supplied by a liveaboard is going to depend on the specific boat, just like any dive op. Keep in mind it will often be something you need to arrange in advance, as they may not have room to carry a full range of equipment/sizes, or much of anything. Like I wouldn't recommend just getting there and saying "hey I need a set of gear." (I've been on LOBs where someones reg died, and they wound up using the reg of a DM that wasn't doing that dive, because they had no spares on board - and not low end boats. Some can be pretty good about minor repairs, but that can depend on the staff on board.)

You might want to consider getting your own dive computer if you haven't, and learn your way around it. You can get a perfectly good basic one for not that much.

What does "sea life" mean to you? Big stuff? Small stuff? Schools of stuff?

What is "not stressful?"

I would tend to suggest Raja Ampat. But given possibly light experience and not knowing budget, and the zillion LOBs there, I wouldn't know what to suggest. Of course there are land based options there too.

Or perhap a LOB to Tubbataha in the Philippines if you happen to be going at the right time of year - only way to get there - plus time on land in one of the many diving areas around the country.