St. Lucia shore diving

[MN Lakeman]

I've search the past several years of threads on St Lucia diving, shops, good sites, etc, but I have found nothing on the shore diving experience @ Anse Chastanet. My wife & I are traveling there the end of the month & plan on hopefully an equal amount of hiking, site seeing & even mountain biking along with a dive each day, so the shore diving would be ideal for at least some of our busier days there. Anyone?

 

[Scoooter961]

The shore diving there is ok, not great but decent. You have to go with a guide and I believe they go at 1:30. Do the plantation tour with Memo, it's very informative.

 

[Altamira]

I did a two tank dive last year near Anse Chastanet, but from a boat. Before the crew dropped the divers, they put four snorkelers and a guide near small beaches close to our dive areas, and they stayed pretty close to shore because of the currents slightly farther out. The first dive was somewhat of an out and back, but still had some current. The second dive was Superman's Flight, so it was definitely a drift dive without any way to get back to the start point other than by boat. We returned to the start points to pick up the snorkelers. My wife, who is certified, but chose to snorkel that day, commented that the close in snorkeling was not all that special, and they were warned to not go out past a certain point due to currents. You can shore dive from Anse Chastanet beach, but it was not great either, and the same warning applied about not going out past a certain point, but that may vary from day to day.

 

[rick00001967]

i have been to st lucia but am not that familiar with the mountain elevations. if you will be doing all these activities you mentioned, pls be mindful of elevation changes after diving when you make your plans.

 

[MN Lakeman]

Thanks for noting that - in a similar concern, we plan to have our land activities in the morning & after a long restful lunch hour, have a dive in the afternoon. We're going to plan our big Grand Piton hike on our last "gas off" day.

 

[MN Lakeman]

After reading about the top reviewed dive sites, my wife has already bowed out of Superman's Flight, as she isn't comfortable with strong drift dives due to a bad experience in Coz - so I'll be hitting that on my own. Hopefully the one tank afternoon dives will have some milder current dive sites for us both to enjoy.

 

[RJMETZ]

We have dove Superman’s Flight a handful of times. The first time it was like high speed carnival ride. We were very new divers and may be didn’t know what we were in for. We have headed out that way a time or two and the dive was called because the current was too strong. The last time we dove, there was barely any current at all. It was really wonderful. I don’t know exactly how you navigate that but it isn’t always high speed drifting.