Dominica, Bequia, Carriacou, Grenada...decisions decisions

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dierenarts

Contributor
Messages
72
Reaction score
5
Location
Connecticut, USA
# of dives
25 - 49
Trying something new for February 2015. Keep seeing conflicting opinions on the diving, reef, and fish quality. My wife and I enjoy recreational diving and love to snorkel on the surface intervals. We look for the out-of-the-way places and don't go for the cruise ship/resort crowds. We're adventurous and have driven anywhere and everywhere. All of the above 4 seems to have something for us. Which would give us both great diving and easy to reach snorkeling beaches with healthy reefs and marine life?
 
Of those four I would say Carriacou best meets your specifications. All have some good Eastern Carib diving, nothing spectacular. Carriacou with a small population, is less developed, less traveled and also doesn't get much run-off. It's compact enough to head to the "other" side of the island on a whim, diving and snorkeling is good all around. Lots of potential day trip/dive visits to PSV or some of the other Grenadines. On the east side of Carriacou there is a large barrier reef that can have some very cool diving & snorkeling inside & outside if conditions are settled; nothing between you and Africa except open ocean. Be advised that in February the trades are still at their most boisterous and can make all the eastern sides of the Windwards & Leewards tough to dive.
 
90 days until Carriacou for us. I HEAR you on the cruise ships!!!

Getting there isn't the easiest but that's why it's unspoilt, as far as Caribbean islands go I guess. Dominica was undoable in one day, Bequia seems a bit "too" small and mostly for yachties. For us Grenada was a little bit too big and getting there required LIAT. Not an option I feel comfortable doing. Bequia via SVG and Carriacou via SVG from Barbados to Union then a boat ride to Carriacou. Carriacou has a very strong independent culture. That for us was totally lacking in Grand Turk which we did last year.
 
Best places in this part of the carribean is BVI ou Guadeloupe ( les Saintes).
 
We've been to Grenada and Bequia, and dove Carriacou from a liveaboard. Dominica is still on our list so no info there. I also love snorkeling but can't comment as I don't take it into account when planning a trip and don't usually remember - it's more like if a good opportunity happens to present itself, I hop in.

While we didn't do a lot of dives on Grenada, I wasn't overly impressed with what I saw. Part of the problem was viz sucked, and I don't know how typical that was. It seems other people have had better dive experiences there. I thought it was a great island topside though. Interesting place to explore, lots to see. It's bigger and more populous than the other places with a real (and interesting) city, so a different experience. By far the easiest of those to get to. I'm not sure if I would go there specifically for a whole dive trip, but I would happily combine some days there with another place if it made sense travel-wise.

Bequia is a very cool place topside. Lots of interesting stuff to explore given the small size. The diving was pretty good, and there were some unique dives. We were also able to dive Isle a Quatre by day boat from there. Surprising number of pretty good restaurants for a small out of the way place, probably because it's a big stop for the sailing crowd. We combined it with a trip to St. Vincent (one of our favorites), and took the ferry between. I would definitely like to get back to Bequia. (We've been going other places, holding out for them to finish the new St. Vincent airport and maybe get some real airlines and planes flying there.)

I don't remember the diving on Carriacou in particular without digging out an old dive log. My memory says fine but nothing to make me go to the *trouble of getting there to stay. If I wanted to go to a small unpopulated island to dive, I'd probably sooner return someplace like Little Cayman. But I wasn't actually staying on land, so for all I know it might be similar to Bequia and very cool. (Actually, I just googled "getting to Carriacou" out of curiousity and supposedly there's a high speed catamaran between there and Grenada. That's something I may look into...)

*(I define "trouble" as anything that involves more than one puddle jumper, planes so small taking my dive gear might be a headache, or having to fly LIAT.)
 
For me the choice of Carriacou was the culture, small, but not too small and 3 dive shops! The number of shops is a huge bonus, our first ever dive vacation almost never was after your son is too young and well...it went downhill with the "person" behind the counter who shouldn't be dealing with the public. Found another shop that was just awaiting permits and we were good to go, no permits and all!

Also was the variety of dives, besides Coz, our last 5 trips are 90% wall dives. We found we love drifts and Carriacou has many! There is even a frog fish somewhere, I thought they were only in Asia.

As for vis, we never seem to have the greatest luck so it will be what it is.

Looking forward to the Parang music festival as well as Boxing Day when the bands take to walking and playing all over the island.

I am taking a chance with SVG and luggage but they seem to get really good reviews. Can't say that with LIAT.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
St Vincent & the Grenadines seems to be a relatively good place to find frogfish (and seahorses.) But we've seen them other places in the Caribbean as well, Curacao is one place that comes to mind. A good guide will know where they are if they're there. (Diving with the now retired Bill Tewes in St. Vincent was pretty much a guarantee of them.)

I'll be curious to hear about any experience with SVG Air and luggage. All the planes I've seen of theirs were wicked small, but it's been awhile.
 
I just had a thought that wouln't require a choice. Anyone know of a sailing live aboard diving charter outfit in St Vincent/Grenadines?
 
I don't know of any that seriously focus on diving, nothing like an Aggressor style operation. (The Wind Dancer was there for awhile and it was an awesome itinerary, I wish they still did it but they moved the boat to Cocos years ago.) But sailboat rentals are big down there, and I think a small number of them support diving in a limited fashion. You'd have to dig through the charter companies and what they have available.

What seems more popular is "rendezvous diving" - the dive ops pick you up from your boat, take you diving, and drop you off back at your boat. So it's not like having a compressor on your boat and complete freedom to jump in the water where ever strikes your fancy, and obviously limited to areas where there are actually dive ops. But they're taking care of supplying tanks and also guides with local knowledge of the dive sites. Most times we went diving in Bequia we'd be picking up people at a sailboat or 2 before heading out.
 
I just had a thought that wouln't require a choice. Anyone know of a sailing live aboard diving charter outfit in St Vincent/Grenadines?

If you look you will find a number of charter companies who have "crewed" charter boats available either from Grenada or St Vincent. Finding one the that is set up for diving is a smaller subset, but they do exist. February is in the high season for charters so it is expensive especially for 2 people since you will have to bear the whole charter cost including Captain and Mate/Cook. I would suggest a Catamaran if you decide to do a charter they are much easier to stage and dive from, not to mention more stable generally.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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