reefrat
Contributor
My wife and I were in Australia recently to catch up with family and on the way back to the US stopped at Cairns for a few days of liveaboard diving.
I've done a few GBR liveaboards in the past and had raised her expectations with tales of great diving and good times.
Due to a tight schedule we booked a trip on the Reef Encounter (via Reef Experience) for 2 nights/ 3 days, this was the only operator that was departing and returning on our dates.
I'm not going to go into great detail here about the trip but rather summarise our experience, as follows:
Pros
Good food and most of the staff were friendly.
Cons
The diving is on a few patches of reef in the Norman/ Saxon reef areas and due to the weather conditions viz was quite bad (down to maybe 8 metres or 25ft) but due to the nature of the operation the boat will not move to other locations- you can't control the weather so this is not a major complaint!
The max depth you will find on any site is about 20 metres and I'm certain the staff would have kittens if they checked your computer after the dive and found much more! We were mostly into macro photography on this trip so this was not a big deal for us but it would annoy some divers that I know.
The max allowable dive time is 40 minutes and they became borderline abusive toward us when we overstayed on one very shallow dive with an average depth of 5 metres, as usual we surfaced with about 2000 psi (~ 130 bar) air remaining.
One jeuvenile divemaster in particular was practically foaming at the mouth over our "unsafe actions" and it took all my restraint not to advise him what a ****head he was and get us thrown off!
There was no Nitrox and no camera rinse tank or camera bench.
Most divers on board were relatively inexperienced and used the operator scuba equipment- as far as I could determine this gear was never rinsed during the trip or between divers and examination of one set showed heavy salt build-up on fittings.
Then I was badly mauled by bed bugs on both arms, across my back and upper legs- the worst I have ever been bitten in 25 years of travel to most corners of the world. The management in Cairns refused to talk to me about this or even acknowledge my complaint. I was on antihistamines and creams for 4 days to control the itching and reduce the size of the boils and sores.
I could go on, yes there was other stuff, but the bottom line is that this operator specializes in getting the maximum number of persons through in the shortest time.
In short, this is "cattle-truck" diving.
As stated earlier we booked with this operator due to time constraints but in retrospect we would rather have not gone at all- and we are VERY keen divers!
The experienced, competent and discerning diver needs to scrutinize any prospective GBR (and perhaps other such popular tourist location) liveaboard operators prior to making any booking to ensure that they will get a true GBR experience.
There are many high quality operators out there that offer a great dive trip and I have previously enjoyed 2 of them.
In view of my experience I cannot recommend this particular operation to anyone.
I've done a few GBR liveaboards in the past and had raised her expectations with tales of great diving and good times.
Due to a tight schedule we booked a trip on the Reef Encounter (via Reef Experience) for 2 nights/ 3 days, this was the only operator that was departing and returning on our dates.
I'm not going to go into great detail here about the trip but rather summarise our experience, as follows:
Pros
Good food and most of the staff were friendly.
Cons
The diving is on a few patches of reef in the Norman/ Saxon reef areas and due to the weather conditions viz was quite bad (down to maybe 8 metres or 25ft) but due to the nature of the operation the boat will not move to other locations- you can't control the weather so this is not a major complaint!
The max depth you will find on any site is about 20 metres and I'm certain the staff would have kittens if they checked your computer after the dive and found much more! We were mostly into macro photography on this trip so this was not a big deal for us but it would annoy some divers that I know.
The max allowable dive time is 40 minutes and they became borderline abusive toward us when we overstayed on one very shallow dive with an average depth of 5 metres, as usual we surfaced with about 2000 psi (~ 130 bar) air remaining.
One jeuvenile divemaster in particular was practically foaming at the mouth over our "unsafe actions" and it took all my restraint not to advise him what a ****head he was and get us thrown off!
There was no Nitrox and no camera rinse tank or camera bench.
Most divers on board were relatively inexperienced and used the operator scuba equipment- as far as I could determine this gear was never rinsed during the trip or between divers and examination of one set showed heavy salt build-up on fittings.
Then I was badly mauled by bed bugs on both arms, across my back and upper legs- the worst I have ever been bitten in 25 years of travel to most corners of the world. The management in Cairns refused to talk to me about this or even acknowledge my complaint. I was on antihistamines and creams for 4 days to control the itching and reduce the size of the boils and sores.
I could go on, yes there was other stuff, but the bottom line is that this operator specializes in getting the maximum number of persons through in the shortest time.
In short, this is "cattle-truck" diving.
As stated earlier we booked with this operator due to time constraints but in retrospect we would rather have not gone at all- and we are VERY keen divers!
The experienced, competent and discerning diver needs to scrutinize any prospective GBR (and perhaps other such popular tourist location) liveaboard operators prior to making any booking to ensure that they will get a true GBR experience.
There are many high quality operators out there that offer a great dive trip and I have previously enjoyed 2 of them.
In view of my experience I cannot recommend this particular operation to anyone.
