2003 Dry Tortugas Trip

I just saw the thread about a Scubaboarder cruise and a better thought has come to my mind...Why don't we get a group up and charter the Ultimate Getaway for a 4 day trip to the Dry Tortugas. No dealing with a cruise line and only getting in 4-6 dives over a 5 day trip. Try getting 20+ dives over the 4 day trip in an area that is just a pretty and has as much life as most places in the Western Carib. The cost comes out to about $650 per person or so depending on how well you tip.

OK, so the acomodations are pretty spartan and the food is not cooked by a 5 star chef, although I would say the food was better than on the Carnival 7 day cruise I went on for my honeymoon, no discos and no bars, but a bunch of great diving. The dives range from 25 foot reef dives to a couple of 115ft wreck dives on a WWII freighter that got torpedoed. My last trip I saw a 10-12 bull shark, a bunch of barracuda, many giant grouper, a ton of Amberjacks, many reef fish and great coral reefs. Most of the dives are within the National park which is a protected area. The boat has Nitrox on board and I bet we could talk an instructor or two to go with us and schedule a class or two.

Let me know if anyone is interested. My wife and I are going again in December and we can try to make arrangements then if we get enough interest.

I'd be interested in doing that next year.

I had a trip scheduled for the Tortugas in Feb of this year but had to cancel due to work. I still want to go there, never been.

This trip sounds pretty good, never been. Wonder if land excursion to check out Ft. Jefferson would be possible ?
Don't know about water temps and sea conditions at that time of year. Definitely have peaked our interest, think I'll check this out.
Any trip reports would be most helpful. Thanks

The group that I was going with last time said it was awesome. They have planned to go again this February, think they were on a 5 day trip and did around 20 dives.

BTW,
The operator they had did make a stop at the fort.

I'll see if I can find the name of the outfit. It might be the same one mentioned here.

The only boat I know of that makes the Tortugas trip regularly is the Ultimate Getaway, http://www.ultimategetaway.net , and they typically stop at the Fort for an hour or two on Saturday morning. The fort is where they take the group photos. The trip we went on had 1 extra day added in and I managed to get 21 dives in the 3.5 days of diving. They try to make 6-8 day dives and 1 night dive each day but this can be reduced due to daylight savings time and you get in fewer dives if you are doing drift dives. It was an awesome trip. My write-up from May is in the North American section.

Do you recall what they were getting for a Nitrox fill, and what kind of exposure suit were you wearing in December? I might be interested in the trip.

The Nitrox fills were $10 for the entire trip, not per day or per fill but for the entire trip. They have a membrane system on board the boat and they triple check the O2 content (once when it comes out of the system again when it comes out of the bank and again once your tank has been filled. I have not been in December, but from talking from some people who have expect temps in the high 70's to low 80's so you are looking at 3-5 mm range suits. We are not planning a group trip for this December as the planning time is too short, but sometime in the spring of "03. When we went out in May I ended up wearing eitehr my .5 mm jumpsuit or my .5 mm tnic for every dive except the Baja California dive which had a wicked thermocline. For that dive I plan on taking my 7mm Goldcore farmer john this next trip. Of course the Baja sits at 114 ft and is one of the last dives on the trip so you need more thermal protection anyway.

I found the boat quite comfortable and I was really happy that we stopped at 8 different dive sites during the course of a single day. Passengers could dive or not dive according to their whims.

The only complaint that I had with the nitrox fill system is that you dive whatever happens to come out of the membrane system. I had a different O2 percentage each time I went down. I wasn't doing the extreme kind of diving where this would be a deal breaker, but I found it a bit disconcerting anyway.

The boat is going to be taken out of the water in January and renovated. There will be private cabins instead of the group bunk rooms that they have now. I can only assume that this means the price will go up for bookings next year. They are offering generous discounts for booking this November and December. The only trouble is that trips in the Gulf tend to get blown out quite a bit in the Autumn and Winter months.