Best of St Lucia, Grenada or Grenadines

[elsmith]

Just returned from a week's stay at Palm Island Resort.
I'll address the resort first... It is a beautiful, elegant private resort (all inclusive) and I very highly recommend it. Service was impeccable, attentive to every detail, but respecting privacy. Accommodations are excellent, beach is beautiful (good snorkeling, lots of comfortable beach chairs), food is exquisite, unlimited top shelf drinks, no noisy night life. There are trails for hiking or bicycles, free use of hobie cats and kayaks, and a spa onsite. Overall, an outstanding value.
Now the diving...
We dove 2 days with Grenadine Dive. They are located on Union Island but pick you up at Palm Island. We booked in advance through their website. One day we were their only 2 customers, the second day we picked up one other diver from a yacht. The captain, Jeremiah, and Tim, our guide, were both excellent. We brought our own regs and accessories, but due to luggage restrictions on the small plane opted to use their BCDs. They were a little worn, but functioned well. Nitrox was not available.
We did 3 tanks at Tobago Cays and 1 at Mayreau Garden (2 drift dives and 2 out-and-back from mooring buoys). Boat rides about 10 minutes. Viz was only fair -- 30-50 feet one day and 40-60 the next. The reefs were in good shape. Very nice coral at Mayreau, but not a lot of marine life. Very large schools of fish, several nurse sharks, and all the usual critters at Tobago Cays. We were satisfied, but not "WOW'ed" so decided to cancel our third day of diving. (As previously noted, it is very expensive).

My advice:

• If you want a great, relaxing vacation with a few dives, GO!! Be sure to book the Yannis catamaran cruise with snorkeling at Tobago Cays. I'm not an avid snorkeler, but we swam with literally hundreds of turtles AND had unlimited drinks and a wonderful lunch at half the cost of diving.
• If you're looking for a dive destination, go to Bonaire, Cozumel, Roatan...

 

[PatrickAtl]

Can anybody on this thread please provide some insight into the guided/no-guide restrictions in St.Lucia/St. Vincent/Grenadines? We're 8 experienced,responsible divers doing a sail-dive bareboat from St. Lucia in September 2018. Bareboating, we prefer to rent tanks and weights and do our own diving when and where it suits us. We have been told we cannot dive in St. Lucia without a local guide. I think that's the same in St.Vincent, within the marine parks. Where can we dive without a guide in that area? Who is the best source for off-site tank and weight rentals? I don't mind supporting the local dive industry. But, I don't like being strong-armed into doing shore-based diving with local shops. Thanks. Patrick

 

[Wookie]

The problem, Patrick, is that St. Lucia is all marine park. The guide is required so you don't stray into a fishing area, etc. my advice, if you don't want a guide, is to skip st. Lucia.

 

[PatrickAtl]

Thanks. We do plan to dive with a local shop in St. Lucia, partly for that reason and partly for the benefit of local experience. We are hoping, however, to rent tanks in St. Vincent to do some diving on our own, outside of the parks, in the St. Vincent/Grenadines area (if there is much of anything outside of the parks to see). With a sailboat and 8 divers, it's a real pain to put everybody in a dingy, make 2 or 3 trips to shore, just to get on another boat ... to go back to where you started. I'm not even in finding many operations that will pick up/drop off at sailboat moorings.

 

[Oliviamay]

Can anybody on this thread please provide some insight into the guided/no-guide restrictions in St.Lucia/St. Vincent/Grenadines? We're 8 experienced,responsible divers doing a sail-dive bareboat from St. Lucia in September 2018. Bareboating, we prefer to rent tanks and weights and do our own diving when and where it suits us. We have been told we cannot dive in St. Lucia without a local guide. I think that's the same in St.Vincent, within the marine parks. Where can we dive without a guide in that area? Who is the best source for off-site tank and weight rentals? I don't mind supporting the local dive industry. But, I don't like being strong-armed into doing shore-based diving with local shops. Thanks. Patrick

Hi Patrick,

My understanding of the rule in St Lucia is that you can dive from your own boat but you need to take a St Lucian dive master with you.

In St Vincent and the Grenadines the only area where you must dive with a local operator is within the marine park at the Tobago Cays. Full details of the area that the marine park covers can be seen at www.tobagocays.org
The nearest dive shop to the cays is Grenadines Dive who are based on Union Island.
You can dive independently anywhere else in the country and can get tanks refilled at dive shops in St Vincent, Bequia, Mustique and Union.

Are you doing a one way charter from St Lucia to Grenada? If so it will be very difficult to rent tanks for the entire trip because of the difficulties in returning them to whoever you rented them from. Most dive shops in St Vincent are reasonably close to the dive areas so you could rent tanks from the nearest shop to use for the day.
Here are the email address of all the dive shops in St Vincent and the Grenadines if you want to inquire about tank rentals/refills:

Located in the south of mainland St Vincent:
Dive St Vincent - bill2s@vincysurf.com
Serenity Dive - serenitydive@hotmail.com
Indigo Dive - info@indigodive.com
Located in the north of St Vincent:
Richmond Vale Academy - mail@richmondvale.org

Bequia:
Dive Bequia - cathy@divebequia.com
Bequia Dive Adventures adventures@vincysurf.com

Mustique:
Mustique Watersports - watersports@mustique.vc

Union:
Grenadines Dive - gdive@vincysurf.com

Petit St Vincent:
Jean Michel Cousteau's Caribbean Dive Center - contact@jeanmichelcousteaudiving-caribbean.com

Hope that helps

 

[Oliviamay]

Thanks. We do plan to dive with a local shop in St. Lucia, partly for that reason and partly for the benefit of local experience. We are hoping, however, to rent tanks in St. Vincent to do some diving on our own, outside of the parks, in the St. Vincent/Grenadines area (if there is much of anything outside of the parks to see). With a sailboat and 8 divers, it's a real pain to put everybody in a dingy, make 2 or 3 trips to shore, just to get on another boat ... to go back to where you started. I'm not even in finding many operations that will pick up/drop off at sailboat moorings.

It's pretty much the norm for all of the dive shops in St Vincent to collect divers from yachts. Who has said they can't?

 

[PatrickAtl]

Hi Patrick,

My understanding of the rule in St Lucia is that you can dive from your own boat but you need to take a St Lucian dive master with you.

In St Vincent and the Grenadines the only area where you must dive with a local operator is within the marine park at the Tobago Cays. Full details of the area that the marine park covers can be seen at www.tobagocays.org
The nearest dive shop to the cays is Grenadines Dive who are based on Union Island.
You can dive independently anywhere else in the country and can get tanks refilled at dive shops in St Vincent, Bequia, Mustique and Union.

Are you doing a one way charter from St Lucia to Grenada? If so it will be very difficult to rent tanks for the entire trip because of the difficulties in returning them to whoever you rented them from. Most dive shops in St Vincent are reasonably close to the dive areas so you could rent tanks from the nearest shop to use for the day.
Here are the email address of all the dive shops in St Vincent and the Grenadines if you want to inquire about tank rentals/refills:

Located in the south of mainland St Vincent:
Dive St Vincent - bill2s@vincysurf.com
Serenity Dive - serenitydive@hotmail.com
Indigo Dive - info@indigodive.com
Located in the north of St Vincent:
Richmond Vale Academy - mail@richmondvale.org

Bequia:
Dive Bequia - cathy@divebequia.com
Bequia Dive Adventures adventures@vincysurf.com

Mustique:
Mustique Watersports - watersports@mustique.vc

Union:
Grenadines Dive - gdive@vincysurf.com

Petit St Vincent:
Jean Michel Cousteau's Caribbean Dive Center - contact@jeanmichelcousteaudiving-caribbean.com

Hope that helps

Wow.That is exactly what we needed. Thank you so much. I love Scubaboard...

 

[PatrickAtl]

It's pretty much the norm for all of the dive shops in St Vincent to collect divers from yachts. Who has said they can't?

Sorry. I misspoke. It was only one shop on St. Lucia that was not interested in meeting our boat, Dive St. Lucia. I hadn't gotten that far with the others. I just felt that I got some push back from the others about the whole bareboat diving concept. Another on St. Lucia told me that they might rent us tanks (noting heavy fines if we dove without a guide) with cash deposits to cover the replacement costs (not complaining at all about paying deposits, I know it's expensive and a pain to replace equipment in the islands.... just, who uses "cash"? Is that the green stuff that used to be in my wallet next to my credit card?). I'm just finding that St. Vincent & the Grenadines seem to be a bit more diver-friendly (or bareboat diver friendly) than St. Lucia (or maybe Martinique), unless you want to do standard dive shop or resort diving.

Again, I absolutely understand and agree with the the need to promote local economies, protect local dive operations and, most importantly, protect the reefs, especially in pristine marine parks. There is just a segment of the diving community that sometimes wants to boat and dive when and where we want. In our particular group, we collectively have thousands of dives among us, decades of diving experience and we are respectful and responsible divers. Sometimes we're totally fine with going ashore to dive and appreciate having a guide. Sometimes not so much. It's just nice to have the choice. Thanks again for the help!

 

[sagibson]

PatrickAtl … We're doing a 12 night bareboat out of Grenada in June 2020. Our plan right now is to go as far north as Bequia before we head south back toward Grenada. How was your experience diving from your boat in 2018? We want to rent tanks to dive on our own a few days as well as doing some rendezvous diving with the local shops. Managing the boat and dinghy to dive on our own in the BVI has been super easy. I'm really curious on the logistics of managing them in the Grenadines.

 

[sagibson]

Sorry. I misspoke. It was only one shop on St. Lucia that was not interested in meeting our boat, Dive St. Lucia. I hadn't gotten that far with the others. I just felt that I got some push back from the others about the whole bareboat diving concept. Another on St. Lucia told me that they might rent us tanks (noting heavy fines if we dove without a guide) with cash deposits to cover the replacement costs (not complaining at all about paying deposits, I know it's expensive and a pain to replace equipment in the islands.... just, who uses "cash"? Is that the green stuff that used to be in my wallet next to my credit card?). I'm just finding that St. Vincent & the Grenadines seem to be a bit more diver-friendly (or bareboat diver friendly) than St. Lucia (or maybe Martinique), unless you want to do standard dive shop or resort diving.

Again, I absolutely understand and agree with the the need to promote local economies, protect local dive operations and, most importantly, protect the reefs, especially in pristine marine parks. There is just a segment of the diving community that sometimes wants to boat and dive when and where we want. In our particular group, we collectively have thousands of dives among us, decades of diving experience and we are respectful and responsible divers. Sometimes we're totally fine with going ashore to dive and appreciate having a guide. Sometimes not so much. It's just nice to have the choice. Thanks again for the help!

How did your trip and diving go in the Grenadines? Our trip postponed twice due to COVID is finally happening next week. We're planning to rendezvous dive some but we also want rent tanks to dive some on our own. We're picking up our boat in St Vincent for two weeks in the Grenadines.