Coco View in October

Hi all, I'm considering a trip to Coco View in mid October....any divers experiences there at that time of year will be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks!!!

Mark

Yea....during hurricane Wilma
We were lucky and missed 2 days diving and not much more. That said, it could have been worse. Roatan is in the hurricane belt and Oct is one of the more active months so take that into consideration when booking. IMO putting it off until at least mid Nov or even later is a good idea. Hurricanes can happen in Nov or Dec for that matter but your odds are better.

Ask [user]Doc[/user] if he doesn't see this thread.

Moved to the Bay Islands forum...Roatan is technically Central America.

expect rain and lower vis..... no way to know how much, but Oct-Nov are the rainy season.

Sorry, I was busy ​ING something on :sblogo:

If in the Bay Islands, the only positive to being in the Caribbean Oct/Nov would come from being on the South side (CCV) of Roatan. You're shielded from the wind and wave.

November is historically the rainiest month on the Bay Islands. I'll be there this year (2013- see my sig line link), to do some dive guiding and critter-gitter lecturettes. I'll be the guy who brought the umbrella.

You were going to be wet, anyway.

Been there last November. Yeah it was quite wet. Yeah, the dive op shuttled us over to the south side on all days except one. But yeah, it was awesome nonetheless.

herman:

Roatan is in the hurricane belt and Oct is one of the more active months so take that into consideration when booking. IMO putting it off until at least mid Nov or even later is a good idea. .

Click to expand...

I know it is probably best to simply ignore such posts but I cannot help it. Sure, Roatan may be in some type of hurricane belt yet hurricanes are pretty rare, Roatan has been affected by some distant hurricanes but Roatan has not been hit with a hurricane since 1998 and the few that have come close such as Wilma are so rare I cannot imagine someone suggesting you change from one of the wettest months, October, to THE wettest November . Odds of a hurricane in October on Roatan are very small, odds of LOTS of rain on Roatan in November are very good

Having delt with hurricanes here in NC I can tell you they are no fun and we have the infrastructure to deal them. Roatan is a different matter and watching the storm track towards you is not a pleasant experience knowing you are on an island with little resources and to make matters worst you are setting at ocean level with no where to go...had that storm hit us directly there is no telling how bad a shape we would have been in. Wilma (2005) got to about 100 miles north of Roatan, putting Roatan on the “good” side of a hurricane. Another 100 miles south and it could have been another Mitch with me stuck in the middle of it. I can/have/will dive in the rain but being in a small foreign country while being hit by a hurricane is not something I care to experience again. Poo poo me if you like but living in NC and dealing with hurricances all my life I respect them. Make your own choice but looking at the hurricane tracking maps over the last 20 years or so tells me avoiding any place in the hurricane belt during Aug to Nov is a good idea, esp if that place is an isolated island with little resouces when it gets hit.

Another Mitch??
Mitch was not too much of an issue for Roatan other than poorly laid out docks and such, My home lost a few asphalt shingles , Sea level?? Some is but take a look at geography, the water from a surge falls off the hills very quickly, Roatan is not flat, Also recall there were very few deaths and injuries on the Bay Islands, Mitch caused much more damage and death on the mainland so maybe the Islands were actually safer??


Yep. So your home state of NC puts you top on Hurricane phobes, My US State is lowly Florida so we don't even know what a hurricane is. Its not like you could not evacuate if you got skeered watching the tracking so what's the big deal? The bigger issue with being third world island is letting other decide , like when they evacuated the Island and flew people to the mainland, CLOSER to where the storm landed. Blow all the smoke you want, it makes no sense not booking a trip because of an extremely rare occurrence which you could evacuate if you got the willies and for a small amount have trip insurance, last storm to do any serious damage was Mitch in 98 and it took its toll on the mainland and Guanaja, it might go back as far as the 60's to Roatan having any type of life threatening storms

Downplay it all you want but fact remains, if Mitch had come a little farther north OR Wilma had tracked a little farther south the Bay Islands would have taken a big hit. It's easy to look at their paths and the distruction that happened in their path to see it is completely possible for the next one may go up the middle,make a direct hit on Roatan and do major damage to the resort areas. While a lot of Roatan is up high, the main dive resorts are not...CCV is maybe 3 feet above sea level. You know as well as I do, hurricanes are nothing to mess with, nothing phobic about that. I just makes sence to me to avoid planning trips to that part of the world during hurricane season. Hopefully we will all miss the hurricanes this and every season.