Here's a report of my trip to Grand Turk from 4/12 to 4/19.
My wife and I flew into Grand Turk from Fort Lauderdale (FLL) on Spirit Airlines on April 12. After reading of all the problems with Sky King, we thought a direct flight on a full-size airliner was going to make things a lot easier. We couldn't have been more wrong. FLL was a complete zoo as Spirit had five flights leaving within a 20 minute period and fewer than 10 check-in agents. The line literally reached out the door and down the sidewalk, ending around a third of the way to the next terminal. It took an hour to make it to through the line.
The flight itself was uneventful, the plane was a new Airbus and the interior was quite nice. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Grand Turk, we found that only 1 of our 3 checked bags was there. Now the real problems began. Spirit has no personnel on Grand Turk, instead they have an arrangement with Sky King to handle luggage problems. To make a long story short, we eventually got our bags on the last flight from Provo the next day, but only after being lied to repeatedly by Sky King personnel on GT and Provo, wasting a day and a half tracking down the bags ourselves and waiting for promised calls that never came and running up over $220 worth of phone calls.
We finally got in the 78 degree water on April 14 and were pretty much underwhelmed. Visibility ranged from 50-80', but there was a lot of particulate matter. Corals and sea life were nowhere near as abundant as the Caymans (where I've done most of my diving) or even Cozumel. One nice thing is that dive sites are close by, most around a 10 minute ride on the Carolina Skiffs everyone uses.
We dove with Oasis Divers. They are the most professional of the shops on Front Street (I can't speak to the new operation at Bohio House), have the nicest facilities and have a maximum of 6 divers per boat. We saw up to 10 divers going out on the other ops' skiffs. Oasis also seem a little more willing to go to the slightly more distant sites. The DM is the boat captain. He takes you to the site, leads the dive and surfaces to help everyone in. You take off your gear in the water and hand it up and then climb a really small ladder. A couple of the divers complained that the DM didn't beat them back to the surface, so they had to wait around for help. I was usually the last on board so I never saw it for myself. There were no time limits on the dives and you could dive whatever profile you and your computer were happy with. Surface intervals are spent at the dive shop.
Overall, I can't recommend Oasis right now. They are providing all kinds of services to the cruise ships and even though they keep the cruise divers separate, they appear to simply be overwhelmed by the volume of work. Oasis is building a new location that will exclusively deal with the pod people. Once that's done, I'm sure they'll get back to offering the service they've built their reputation on. But until then, I'd stay away. On cruise ship days, we noticed lots of problems, divers given empty tanks or tank bands not tightened, integrated weights left behind, nobody on shore after dives to help us off. Worse, we were rushed through the dives on one day, there was a barely adequate surface interval and then the DM dove a profile that would have taken us into deco if we'd stayed with him. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we got back and found they were using the boat for a 1pm snorkel trip (we usually got back from the second dive around 1:30).
We did one night dive. Unfortunately, the DM was worn out after spending the day setting up and breaking down equipment used by the cruisers in addition to DMing the regular two morning dives, so he really wasn't into it. When the strobe on the hang line went out, he hung a spare flashlight on the line and decided to spend the whole dive in the shallows within around 20 yards of the boat. One of the divers tried to get a partial refund the next day without any luck.
As far as critters went (beyond the usual suspects), over 10 day dives I saw three turtles (I have video of the DM trying to ride a hawksbill which did not make me happy), a couple of barracuda, an octopus, one big crab, a couple of cleaner shrimp, a nurse shark, a bunch of flamingo tongues, one small ray and a juvenile filefish - no lobsters, no eels. On the night dive, we finally saw a couple of lobsters, a spotted drum and a sting ray. I asked about seahorses, but was told the dredging for the cruise ship pier had killed the entire area where they used to hang out.
We stayed at Osprey Beach Hotel in an upstairs room with king bed. No complaints about the room, it was clean and comfortable and looks right over a nice beach. The shower never got above warm, but I wasn't chilled enough for it to bother me. The hotel restaurant - like everyplace on the street - had mediocre food at high prices.
All in all, I'm in no hurry to go back. Good points are that the diving is easy, there's enough variety to keep you interested for a week, and most of the people we ran into were pretty friendly. Bad points are the potential luggage problems, sea life is better elsewhere, and Oasis has some things it has to work out.
A few photos are here http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=1790 and a bunch are over on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/98618509@N00/sets/72057594113181898/ if you are interested.
Alex
My wife and I flew into Grand Turk from Fort Lauderdale (FLL) on Spirit Airlines on April 12. After reading of all the problems with Sky King, we thought a direct flight on a full-size airliner was going to make things a lot easier. We couldn't have been more wrong. FLL was a complete zoo as Spirit had five flights leaving within a 20 minute period and fewer than 10 check-in agents. The line literally reached out the door and down the sidewalk, ending around a third of the way to the next terminal. It took an hour to make it to through the line.
The flight itself was uneventful, the plane was a new Airbus and the interior was quite nice. Unfortunately, when we arrived in Grand Turk, we found that only 1 of our 3 checked bags was there. Now the real problems began. Spirit has no personnel on Grand Turk, instead they have an arrangement with Sky King to handle luggage problems. To make a long story short, we eventually got our bags on the last flight from Provo the next day, but only after being lied to repeatedly by Sky King personnel on GT and Provo, wasting a day and a half tracking down the bags ourselves and waiting for promised calls that never came and running up over $220 worth of phone calls.
We finally got in the 78 degree water on April 14 and were pretty much underwhelmed. Visibility ranged from 50-80', but there was a lot of particulate matter. Corals and sea life were nowhere near as abundant as the Caymans (where I've done most of my diving) or even Cozumel. One nice thing is that dive sites are close by, most around a 10 minute ride on the Carolina Skiffs everyone uses.
We dove with Oasis Divers. They are the most professional of the shops on Front Street (I can't speak to the new operation at Bohio House), have the nicest facilities and have a maximum of 6 divers per boat. We saw up to 10 divers going out on the other ops' skiffs. Oasis also seem a little more willing to go to the slightly more distant sites. The DM is the boat captain. He takes you to the site, leads the dive and surfaces to help everyone in. You take off your gear in the water and hand it up and then climb a really small ladder. A couple of the divers complained that the DM didn't beat them back to the surface, so they had to wait around for help. I was usually the last on board so I never saw it for myself. There were no time limits on the dives and you could dive whatever profile you and your computer were happy with. Surface intervals are spent at the dive shop.
Overall, I can't recommend Oasis right now. They are providing all kinds of services to the cruise ships and even though they keep the cruise divers separate, they appear to simply be overwhelmed by the volume of work. Oasis is building a new location that will exclusively deal with the pod people. Once that's done, I'm sure they'll get back to offering the service they've built their reputation on. But until then, I'd stay away. On cruise ship days, we noticed lots of problems, divers given empty tanks or tank bands not tightened, integrated weights left behind, nobody on shore after dives to help us off. Worse, we were rushed through the dives on one day, there was a barely adequate surface interval and then the DM dove a profile that would have taken us into deco if we'd stayed with him. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we got back and found they were using the boat for a 1pm snorkel trip (we usually got back from the second dive around 1:30).
We did one night dive. Unfortunately, the DM was worn out after spending the day setting up and breaking down equipment used by the cruisers in addition to DMing the regular two morning dives, so he really wasn't into it. When the strobe on the hang line went out, he hung a spare flashlight on the line and decided to spend the whole dive in the shallows within around 20 yards of the boat. One of the divers tried to get a partial refund the next day without any luck.
As far as critters went (beyond the usual suspects), over 10 day dives I saw three turtles (I have video of the DM trying to ride a hawksbill which did not make me happy), a couple of barracuda, an octopus, one big crab, a couple of cleaner shrimp, a nurse shark, a bunch of flamingo tongues, one small ray and a juvenile filefish - no lobsters, no eels. On the night dive, we finally saw a couple of lobsters, a spotted drum and a sting ray. I asked about seahorses, but was told the dredging for the cruise ship pier had killed the entire area where they used to hang out.
We stayed at Osprey Beach Hotel in an upstairs room with king bed. No complaints about the room, it was clean and comfortable and looks right over a nice beach. The shower never got above warm, but I wasn't chilled enough for it to bother me. The hotel restaurant - like everyplace on the street - had mediocre food at high prices.
All in all, I'm in no hurry to go back. Good points are that the diving is easy, there's enough variety to keep you interested for a week, and most of the people we ran into were pretty friendly. Bad points are the potential luggage problems, sea life is better elsewhere, and Oasis has some things it has to work out.
A few photos are here http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=1790 and a bunch are over on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/98618509@N00/sets/72057594113181898/ if you are interested.
Alex
