drrich2
Contributor
Hi:
Spent last week onboard the Sun Dancer 2 out of Belize, and really enjoyed it. Highly recommended. Since the issue of doing a dive at the Blue Hole vs. skipping it and doing 2 reef dives instead comes up sometimes, thought I'd share my impression. We dove the Blue Hole (using EAN 24), and skipped a dive due to the nitrogen loading at such depth, visiting nearby Half Moon Caye Island (I believe it was called) afterward.
Approaching the Blue Hole entails heading through a channel through the surrounding reef.
I found that when the boat's in it, it doesn't look nearly as huge as I would've thought from the overhead photos. Maybe like sitting on a lake or a large quarry?
Heading down the steep wall is fast. I've got a photo of my Cobalt showing 125 feet at 2 minutes.
At depth, it's pretty barren looking. There were a lot of particulates in the water, giving me a 'diving in a heavy snow' feeling. The stalactites are blunt, huge, thick rock structures that hang down. They don't look like what I'm used to seeing in land caves.
Somebody told me a 'box crab' was on the wall at 130 feet, and I saw a sponge on the wall at around 70 feet I think. I saw some yellow snapper out in the open fairly deep. Otherwise the 'hole' seemed pretty dead.
Once you come up from the hole, you can mess around the shallows near the boat to extend bottom time. There's sea grass, and some other structure.
As for Half Moon Caye Island, I liked it. It was hot; take that bottle of water with you! We arrived at a rather open area with palm trees, but walked a path into forest where there was a bird observatory. We got to see red-footed boobies and frigate birds. Plenty of iguanas, big land hermit crabs, and some little anole lizards.
With messing around in the shallows, I had a 47 1/2 minute dive, max. depth around 136 feet (I used a 100 cf tank by advance request), average depth 46 feet, and my wrist unit (Oceanic VT3) gave temp.s of 79 or 80 all week, but one of the guides believed the waters were about 2 degrees warmer than my computer read.
In a nutshell, I'm glad I dove the Blue Hole and visited the island. I'm in no hurry to do those 2 again; once was enough.
On the other hand, diving Belize on the Sun Dancer 2 was very nice and a fine choice for my 1st live-aboard.
Richard.
Spent last week onboard the Sun Dancer 2 out of Belize, and really enjoyed it. Highly recommended. Since the issue of doing a dive at the Blue Hole vs. skipping it and doing 2 reef dives instead comes up sometimes, thought I'd share my impression. We dove the Blue Hole (using EAN 24), and skipped a dive due to the nitrogen loading at such depth, visiting nearby Half Moon Caye Island (I believe it was called) afterward.
Approaching the Blue Hole entails heading through a channel through the surrounding reef.
I found that when the boat's in it, it doesn't look nearly as huge as I would've thought from the overhead photos. Maybe like sitting on a lake or a large quarry?
Heading down the steep wall is fast. I've got a photo of my Cobalt showing 125 feet at 2 minutes.
At depth, it's pretty barren looking. There were a lot of particulates in the water, giving me a 'diving in a heavy snow' feeling. The stalactites are blunt, huge, thick rock structures that hang down. They don't look like what I'm used to seeing in land caves.
Somebody told me a 'box crab' was on the wall at 130 feet, and I saw a sponge on the wall at around 70 feet I think. I saw some yellow snapper out in the open fairly deep. Otherwise the 'hole' seemed pretty dead.
Once you come up from the hole, you can mess around the shallows near the boat to extend bottom time. There's sea grass, and some other structure.
As for Half Moon Caye Island, I liked it. It was hot; take that bottle of water with you! We arrived at a rather open area with palm trees, but walked a path into forest where there was a bird observatory. We got to see red-footed boobies and frigate birds. Plenty of iguanas, big land hermit crabs, and some little anole lizards.
With messing around in the shallows, I had a 47 1/2 minute dive, max. depth around 136 feet (I used a 100 cf tank by advance request), average depth 46 feet, and my wrist unit (Oceanic VT3) gave temp.s of 79 or 80 all week, but one of the guides believed the waters were about 2 degrees warmer than my computer read.
In a nutshell, I'm glad I dove the Blue Hole and visited the island. I'm in no hurry to do those 2 again; once was enough.
On the other hand, diving Belize on the Sun Dancer 2 was very nice and a fine choice for my 1st live-aboard.
Richard.
