sactomags
Guest
We arrived on a bright, sunny Saturday (of which most were, with a little rain thrown in most days) and made our arrangements to do four dives with Aquamania (aquamania@sintmaarten.net), since they were located right at the resort (Pelican) and because we were also going over on the ferry to Saba for three days (separate trip report already written up).
The crew for Aquamania is terrific! My husband's second stage seemed to be leaking and we found out that it was damaged (still waiting to see what/how and repair it), and they swapped out his reg and put on a loaner -- FREE for the two days we dove with them. They also advised us to call ahead to Saba to warn them and they were ready as well to help us out until we could get back to the States -- no one there carried Oceanic.
The diving was not spectacular, but the team sure was. The water was around 84 degrees, vis around 40-60 feet. They would go to check out a dive site and if vis wasn't over 30 feet, we would go on to another site! Many of the people on the dive boat were returnees from prior years -- and we'll go back to Aquamania as well when we return next year. They have several wrecks, none of which we made it to as the seas were a bit rough. Sea life was the usual myriad of tropicals, some barracuda, turtles, eels, crabs, nothing unusal.
My first time of using my new housing & video could have been a disaster as the strobe fell off right when they handed it down to me. But, the DM jumped in immediately -- and I was descending with my eyes glued on it 50 feet down -- and he got to it before I did. Service ... yes!
Hope to have some pictures posted to another site soon to link from here.
Margaret
The crew for Aquamania is terrific! My husband's second stage seemed to be leaking and we found out that it was damaged (still waiting to see what/how and repair it), and they swapped out his reg and put on a loaner -- FREE for the two days we dove with them. They also advised us to call ahead to Saba to warn them and they were ready as well to help us out until we could get back to the States -- no one there carried Oceanic.
The diving was not spectacular, but the team sure was. The water was around 84 degrees, vis around 40-60 feet. They would go to check out a dive site and if vis wasn't over 30 feet, we would go on to another site! Many of the people on the dive boat were returnees from prior years -- and we'll go back to Aquamania as well when we return next year. They have several wrecks, none of which we made it to as the seas were a bit rough. Sea life was the usual myriad of tropicals, some barracuda, turtles, eels, crabs, nothing unusal.
My first time of using my new housing & video could have been a disaster as the strobe fell off right when they handed it down to me. But, the DM jumped in immediately -- and I was descending with my eyes glued on it 50 feet down -- and he got to it before I did. Service ... yes!
Hope to have some pictures posted to another site soon to link from here.
Margaret
