Brothers OR Daedalus?

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bobbobson

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Location
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So after reading through about the last 2 years worth of posts on this forum, I see everyone raving about the Simply the Best liveaboard itinerary with Brothers, Daedalus, and Elphinstone. I'm looking at liveaboards in May, and 2 itineraries I see are Brothers/Elphinstone and Daedalus/Elphinstone. What are the pros/cons of the diving for each of these 2 options, and any recommendations? Thanks.
 
Both are wonderful reefs and to see the best I would highly recommend you find a trip that does both.Both Big an Small Brother and Daedalus are large undersea mounds with sloping wall covered in the most fabulous coral. In October we saw several Oceanic White tips and Threshers and Grey Reef sharks at the Brothers. other groups saw the resident Manta. At Daedalus we saw the resident school of hammer heads . There were three mantas, we saw at least one often really close on every dive. We also saw a reef white tip.

Daedalus is far further out , so takes longer to get there. But it's worth it for the hammer heads.
 
Sea Serpent and Blue Pearl, Longimanus and others have trips in May that do Brothers, Daeadalus and Elphinstone. Of these I like Brothers and Daedalus better than Elphinstone as that is a small reef that is only interesting when the big fish are around. Big fish like current, sometimes there can be current (even more then you like) but I have been there on several occasions whitout any current at all.
On most ships Brothers and Elphinstone will require that you're at least AOW and have more than 50 dives, because of current and conditions. Knowing how to use an SMB is also recommended.

As you are in the Netherlands, look at Live-aboards - LiveAboards in de Rode Zee :)
 
Sea Serpent and Blue Pearl, Longimanus and others have trips in May that do Brothers, Daeadalus and Elphinstone.

I didn't want to ask about any specific companies, especially since I'm a new account and from experience on other forums you really come across as an advertisement if you start mentioning names, buuuuut since you did I'll ask further. Any experience with Blue Planet? Couldn't find any reviews on them except for ones on this one site that is some sort of paid service to recruit reviews, so I don't have 100% faith in it. Seems like it's hard to find reviews on lots of these liveaboards. Couldn't find any of them except Emperor on tripadvisor. They were the one I was originally looking at with having to make the choice between Brothers/Daedalus since I saw them mentioned a lot on here, but if it's possible to do all 3 I gotta go for it. And nice link thanks!
 
Blue Planet has two bigger ships, the Blue Seas and the Blue Pearl and a smaller one the Blue Planet. I've done trips with all three of them. Good trips, good and relaxed crew. I've also doen trips with Sea Serpent and Emperor ships and they are all good companies.
 
Red Sea Explorers has two trips in May that do all three. You cannot have more fun on a trip than you can have on the MV Tala, because the captain and crew will make sure of it.

You will do a lot of steaming to cover all that ground, though. I've done both that itinerary and the north/Brothers one, and honestly, I think the north/Brothers is more fun, with a mixture of reef and wreck diving, shorter steaming periods, and more options for cover if the weather is unfriendly.
 
Since you are based at Netherlands (and so close to the UK) you might want to look at options offered by larger companies like Scuba Travel (aka Tony Backhurst), Blue-O-Two and Regal Dive. All 3 offer the Simply The Best itinerary (some boats are offered by more than one company) which covers Elphinstone, both Brothers and Daedalus. Shop around for the time that suits you best. The fares include return charter flights from Gatwick.
 
Egypt is the cheapest and closest warm water destination from Europe. I'm sure you can find packages from every major city, at least from Western Europe.
BDE cruises, are, in my experience, more common than cruise that whould only do 2 of them. They are also quite often called golden triangle.
I don't have recommendation on ships, as I used french speaking diving boat (6 weeks so far, next this summer).
 

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