Tubbataha Trip Report - M/Y Vasco - 23-29th May 2013

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Karl_H

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Philippines
I’ve been meaning to put a full report on our recent Tubbataha trip with the MY Vasco but never seemed to get round to it, just to get something out before I forget the finer points I thought it was better to get a brief report out and add to it at a later date.

Our trip was arranged a few months in advance for a full charter on the MY Vasco boat, sadly we had a few drop-out (very!) close to the final departure so we ended up as a group of 10 divers along with another 5 divers from different groups (the boat capacity is for 16 divers).

Our booking was slightly different to most as we had a mix of both technical and recreational divers and we wanted to make sure we could please both groups so agreeing everything with the Vasco took slightly longer than a normal booking. That said the entire booking team were superb and everything that was discussed and agreed happened, based on past trips where things haven’t been as promised this made the trip start out in the best way possible.

This was my 3rd personal trip to Tubbataha but by far the latest in the season I had been, previously I’d been in March and April but we decided on the trip in late May as we thought this week would be very interesting due to the full moon right in the middle of our trip. Sadly the currents were no different to previous trip and seemed to have very little in common with the tide tables we were using, currents seemed to come and go with little warning which made dive planning a little harder than expected.

The boat itself is an older vessel, previously a Russian spy boat (really) now converted into a dive vessel. The major upside of this was that the engine was much quieter than previous boats I’ve been on, despite sleeping in the room immediately next to the main engine I didn’t really have much problem sleeping, even on the way out to Tubbataha when the engine was at full throttle for the majority of the night.

The rooms inside the boat are quite basic but well kept, it’s definitely a dive boat rather than a luxury cruise but for our group it was exactly what we were looking for. Bathrooms are shared between two rooms to a bathroom which is fine for larger groups but could be more difficult for smaller groups where people don’t know each other – there can also some issues with the bathroom been locked from the other room and not re-opened leading to some ‘I’m half asleep, need to pee and cant get into the toilet’ moments. I would highly recommend keeping a small screwdriver handy in the room as this works perfectly as an emergency key for the bathroom doors.

The food on the boat was quite simple excellent. Every day had a different menu, the food quality was fantastic and the serving sizes were large without being excessive. I’m not a big coffee drinker but the coffee available on the boat was fantastic fresh filter coffee with actual milk – no instant coffee or powdered milk we tend to find in most of the Philippine dive resorts.

Diving wise the crew were very helpful, the technical group had to set-up our own gear but once discussed with the crew they helped a lot. The only real worry I had coming into the trip was the ability to get decompression gas blends made without a booster pump, the moment we set foot on the deck and saw the 20+ full 60l tanks of O2 this fear was alleviated, to top it off the blender/compressor man was unreal – you ask for EAN50, you get a tank back with 200.0 bar of EAN50 and 50.0% when analyzed – to fill this accurately without a booster is practically magic :)

After some discussion with the crew we agreed to put the 5 technical divers in a smaller chase boat (Zodiac inflatable style) while the remaining 10 recreational divers would use the much larger chase boat with 2 guides. I think the boats were intended for 6 and 10 passengers respectively so this worked well. The majority of technical dives were done using sidemount (although we had one old-school dive still in doubles) with 3-4 tanks in total so the smaller boat was quite full! This arrangement stopped diver being forced to wait in the sun while other divers finished their deco.

The diving itself was fantastic as always, for me Tubbataha seems to get better every time so there’s no complaints from me. The visibility varied through the day but was literally over 60m/200ft in the morning and tended to worsen over the day, even in the worst conditions we’d have 20m/70ft viz near the surface and much better below around 10-15m in depth. The water was a balmy 32C, this was actually a little too hot (I can’t believe I said that) and was by far the highest I’ve seen as the consistent temperature here in the Philippines (even at depth).

Dives were made 4 times a day with occasional night dives available. The technical group decided we would work on 3 dives per day with the final dive been a much ‘lighter’ dive than the first two. We tended to start with the first dive at 6am (tech group) to 7am and then dives spread evenly through the day. Luckily all of us in the tech group decided night dives were much less fun that getting dry and showered earlier so we tended to focus on the early morning dives when the current was a little stronger (bringing out the bigger stuff!) and the visibility was unreal. Typical dives were 45 minutes then ascend and safety stop for recreational, we did most dives with 90-100 minutes total run time in the tech group, with the final dive been 60 minutes or less.

I won’t go into too much detail on the dives themselves but I’ve added a few pictures below from the trip, there lots more in the Tubbataha Gallery on the following URL - MDA Tubbataha Trip. The highlights for me would be a HUGE marble ray in the deep cavern at the end of the slope at Delson Wreck and a whale shark that come right to us while on our deco on the final day. The reef condition seemed very good in most parts, although the sites around the USS Guardian incident were closed – that said, the whale shark sighting was right at the end of the Black Rock site which is very close to the USS Guardian site – hopefully that's a good sign.

In summary, I’d highly recommend the M/Y Vasco as a diver operation to Tubbataha. It certainly doesn’t have the luxury touches of many other live aboard boats but for serious diving and value for money I thought it was superb. There's lot of images of the Vasco boat on their own website, all images are exactly as it looks, no clever photography.

Karl

Awesome Sidemount.jpgHawksbill Outline.jpgIMG_0037.jpgIMG_0042.jpgIMG_0173.jpgIMG_0196.jpgIMG_0204.jpgTubbataha Sidemount.jpgWhale Shark.jpg
 
Great trip report! The Philippines are so high on my list of places I want to go . . .

Lovely wide angle shots with the sun behind them, too.
 
Did you go near the three recent shipwrecks?
 
Did you go near the three recent shipwrecks?

Three? :-/

The area around the USS Guardian is still closed, although the site4 in which we spotted the whale shark was the closest to that area.

The Chinese poaching vessel is now in Puerto Princessa port, there doesn't seem to be any obvious damage to the area near the ranger station but I guess you'd need to be right on top of the damage to really see it.

I wasn't aware of a third!
 
thanks karl for the report on the vasco. very helpful when searching for a tubbataha liveaboard.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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