Brothers with M/V Valerie (report)

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String

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Firstly i should say i've never been to the Red Sea or on a liveaboard before so my idea of "excellent" may not match anyone elses with more experience of

the area or boats so beware!

Myself and 8 others from the club were booked for 7 days on the M/V Valerie on the Brothers itinerary.

Before launching into a blow by blow account, a bit about the boat.

The boat itself has apparently been refurbished recently and i thought it in good condition. It can house up to 18 divers and we had 12 in total (9 club, 3 others - all British) and has 11 crew in total. Because of the fact it wasn't full we had a lot of space and a few people had cabins to themselves.

valerie_marina_0957.jpg
It follows pretty standard liveaboard design with a large swim platform and 2 small RIBs. The tanks unusually for that area are all steel. Most are 12l dumpys (200 bar) with 4 or 5 15l cylinders for those that want them (at no extra cost). I did like having steel tanks to avoid extra lead on the belts or the floating tank away from your arse feeling you get with Aluminium. All tanks were had DIN convertible valves which came in useful as the other 11 people were all A-clamp regs.

After setting your kit up on the first day you left it in the rack and fills were performed by simply unscrewing your reg and in-situ. That means the kit stayed assembled all the time after that.

One down point was Nitrox. We were asked if anyone wanted it and it would cost $7usd per fill. Nobody took it up at that price and in fact the depths on the Brothers were 40-45m so fairly useless for the 32% they could give unless you wanted DIY air top offs. It appears the boat itself has no onboard blending as a few of us requested nitrox for the Salem Express to be told it wasnt onboard as nobody asked for it before we left port.

The boat had a comfortable living area with 2 sofas, bar, TV, music system and so on. Mid deck it had more outdoor seats and mattresses and shade for people to relax and a sun deck on top.
Cabins themselves were small but functional (all en-suite, 2 single beds and a fridge). There was a slight smell of diesel in some of the cabins particularly after a period of moving but that wasn't too bad.
Food was supplied and more than adequate. Breakfast consisted of the usual cheese,meats,pancakes,honey,eggs, toast and rice pudding(!). Lunch was usually fish (although we never once identified it) with salad, rice and so on. Evening meal fish was replaced by meat.
Other than that some snacks were left out by the bar. Water was free, soft drinks and juice $1 a drink and beers $2 a can.

The food was cooked nicely and quantity sufficient so no complaints there. Nobody onboard got ill at all in the week which says something about it.

The boat crew i found excellent - very friendly and efficient all week. If anyone reported a minor problem it was fixed rapidly. All were easy to get on with. There were 2 guides onboard (Ahmed and Mohammed).

As for the diving we were booked for the Brothers islands and we could decide exactly how long to stay there and offered choices of where to go after that which was a little surprising. Due to night diving being illegal on the Brothers and the earlyish sunset we would be doing 3 dives a day out there and up to 4 nearer shore where we could night dive.

Regarding the Brothers, Little Brother is such a small lump of rock that every dive you complete a lap of it so its really good for 3 dives and no more. Big
Brother is larger and has more options as to where to dive (plateau, numidia, wall etc) so is maybe 3-5 dives. Any more than that and those sites would get a bit repetitive.

big_brother_full_0455.jpg


In total i spent 1110 minutes (18.5 hours) underwater in 5.5 days with a total of 18 dives. Most dives over the hour mark and a lot in the 30-45m range. No time restrictions were placed on the dives.

This was a fairly tiring schedule and most of us were starting to feel it after a few days with people going to bed at 8pm and so on. You got your moneys worth though.

The diving was mainly drop off and wall with a few wrecks. The Brothers didn't disappoint with sharks and other big stuff while the more inshore reefs also crawling with life.
The only coral reef area i've dived previously was the Florida Keys and i found the Red Sea far far superior in terms of reef health, life, colour and so on.
One nice thing differing from dives ive had abroad is that there was never a dive where you had to fight a current to return to the boat. The instructions on all dives were just to go with the current and send your DSMB up if needed when you have to surface. This made current diving actually fun and relaxing compared to the air-sucking endurance exercise you see elsewhere emptying half your tank in 10 mins fighting it.

hammerhead_0400.jpg


Water temperature all through was 27c with the odd thermocline below 40m. I wore a 3mm semi dry vest under a full 5mm semi dry and was fairly warm until the last day or two when i started to get chilled, especially during the strong northerly wind that appeared and stayed.

The first night on arrival was spent on the boat but moored at the Intercontinal Marina in Hurghada and the last night the same. This is about a 20 minute public bus ride into town costing £3 egyptian (about 30p!). Hurghada town itself i didn't like at all. The new marina area is lovely but the town itself is grubby, run down, full of people trying to rip you off and sign posted in Russian. Not a place i'd like to stay.

For the return flight expect lots of queues and beware the dodgy scales weighing to come home - demand they are zeroed before placing your bags on.

So:

Good points:-
(i) Steel tanks
(ii) Great crew
(iii) Good diving
(iv) Sensible approach to diving. No fighting currents, DSMBs and RIBs instead.

Bad points:-
(i) Lack of and cost of Nitrox


Photo gallery:- http://www.hvsac.co.uk/gallery2/v/valerie/
 
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