Red Sea Liveaboard

[jklassy]

I'd like to take a trip in April sometime and am interested in possibly doing a Red Sea liveaboard. Can anyone provide recommendations for a quality operator? I don't need fancy, but I do like a solid focus on safety and great diving.

Also, is travel insurance still an issue in that area? I'd heard they were canceling policies due to the unrest.

 

[jklassy]

Oh, and I'm an American woman traveling solo if that needs to factor in.

Thanks!

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

What is your preference (wrecks, reefs, etc...)?

 

[jklassy]

I'm an experienced diver (several liveaboards all over the world) and I really love wall diving. Reefs are great too, but I don't love wrecks so much.

 

[Crowley]

As always, I can't recommend the competition since I work here, but also won't overtly advertise, so if you're interested, PM me and I can give you details of our company's safaris - we run one in the north of the red sea (sinai and surrounds, out of sharm) and another in the south to st john's etc.

If you have any specific questions, whomever you choose to dive with, then of course feel free to ask in here.

With respect to the travel insurance - it depends on the alert level issued by the country in which you are resident. A full alert invalidates travel insurance completely, but an advisory might be dependent on the company in question. I think the US has lifted their alert but not the advisory, but given that insurance brokers are slippery little **** ***** ****** scumbags, for sure you need to check up front. DAN diving insurance, at least that provided by DAN Europe, was entirely unaffected even at the height of the revolution here.

Cheers

C.

 

[Peter Guy]

IF the MV Tala is running (it is sometimes chartered for long periods of time), that is a boat I highly recommend. It is NOT a "fancy" boat but the staff is fabulous and they know diving!

 

[TSandM]

Peter and I spent a week in 2009 on the MV Tala. I don't know if it is possible to have more fun on a dive trip. The boat is comfortable but not fancy, and the food was generous in quantity and good enough. But the diving -- man, that boat knows how to make sure divers squeeze the last possible drop of fun out of every minute in the water! Any kind of diving you can imagine doing, you can do -- with a guide, without a guide, with a scooter, technical, anything! We did wrecks and gorgeous reefs. The dive crew worked tirelessly to make sure tanks were full (and of what we had asked to have in them) and were enormously helpful to divers. We dove off the RIBs and off the boat, and there were no max dive times.

I cannot say enough good things about Red Sea Explorers. Not only does Faisal run a class boat, we didn't feel like paying guests -- we felt like family.

 

[=C=]

I'd recommend blue o2. Nice boats friendly people, uk crowd. If safety is a concern you may feel most comfortable with these folks. blue o two

I usually go with The Martina I http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/red-sea/348970-trip-report-hurgada-south-martina-i.html. Renda speaks english as well and runs 5 day trips but his boat will be international ( German, Czech, Slovak, Polish, etc...).

I just got an offer for a week out of hurgada for about 700 us from a local Czech operator. I don't know what boat he will be using but quality tends to be pretty good. Not much English on this trip at all but could be an adventure if your interested I'll help without the translations.