Airlie/Cairns cruise port dive help needed

[Rob Teichman]

You may be cutting it a bit fine but if there is a group from the cruise ship who want to dive and / or visit the reef then the cruise ship might work in around the Quicksilver itinerary. Bot are large tourism operators and should be in touch with one another regarding activities for guests.
If the reef trip doesn’t work out then I can highly recommend a day trip to Port Douglas. A small pretty village north of Yorkeys Knob (half hour by bus) with a lovely long beach and excellent restaurants and gift shops.

Thanks. We live on the beach in Mexico so, beaches are not a big thing for us. Flying almost 20 hours to get to Australia we really hoped to be able to dive the reef. I'm one of those people who like to plan everything way ahead of time, so would prefer not to wait till I'm on the ship to find other divers.

 

[Altamira]

Unfortunately the cruise has no diving excursions. Only snorkeling

Don't give up hope on diving from your ship excursion. We stopped in Port Douglas on a cruise several years ago and signed up for a ship excursion to the inner reef on the GBR because the timing was going to be too tight to use one of the local dive vendors. It takes @1:45 to get to/from the floating dock they will take you to which serves as a dock, dining area, snorkel, swimming, and diving platform. No outside vendor could guarantee getting us back to the ship by departure time. Although the ship did not offer a dive excursion, it turned out that the large floating and covered dock at the reef did offer diving (one or two tanks and had rental gear), but you had to book and pay for the dives when at the floating dock. The cruise line had nothing to do with the diving. Check with your ship shore excursion division to ask if diving might be available once on the GBR. They may not commit, but at least should be able to tell you whether or not diving might be available once at the GBR dock site. We took our dive gear, not knowing for sure whether we could dive until we got to the GBR. We did a two tank dive, had a nice lunch, and had plenty of time to snorkel around the floating dock. I wish I could say the diving was all I hoped it would be, but it was a nice two tank dive, and we did not have to worry about getting back for ship's departure time. All in all, I would do it again, just don't expect the reef to be as good as in many of the best Caribbean dive spots. I think in that part of Australia's GBR, you have to go out a lot farther to find the better reefs, and you will definitely not have time to do that during your time in port.