Cairns Live-Aboards - Shorter trips - Suggestions?

[rossandmaureen]

I must apologize if this has been asked and answered before but I can’t find any recent threads….

My daughter will be heading to Cairns in July and will have only two to three days to do some diving and I was wondering whether anyone has comments (good or bad) about the following dive ops:

Rum Runner
ScubaPro
Ocean Quest with Deep Sea Divers Den
Kangaroo Explorer with Cairns Dive Centre
Reef Encounter

Or any other good ones that operate either 2 day/1 night or 3 day/2 night trips

While looking for good value, I am also looking for safety, clean and comfortable accommodation, uncrowded dive sites (preferably not a cattle boat), and good variety in diving.

Do all of them have good and reliable diver sign-in/sign-out systems?

Thanks in advance for any tips you can provide.

 

[almitywife]

sorry but i have no expereince with cairns diving so please let us know what you end up choosing and a trip report

cheers

 

[cubuffsbabe]

I did a 3 night liveaboard out of Cairns last summer with Mike Ball's company, it was actually one of their Minke Whale expeditions.

The accomodations were nice, the food was great, and the crew were friendly and knowleageable. There were the same amount of crew and passengers, so that was really nice.

The sites we dove were amazing....the divemaster gave us an incredibly specific briefing on each site and where to find the unique animals at each site. As a result, we saw a huge variety of stuff.

There was also a Minke whale researcher on board who spotted some whales and gave us the rundown on how to be in the water with them. Many of us on the boat got within a few yards of these amazing animals and were able to observe them (and listen to them!) for a few hours.

We couldn't have been happier with the trip we got with Mike Ball and it was relatively affordable. I would highly recommend them...we've even stayed in touch with some of the crew and other passengers.

Have fun!

 

[cubuffsbabe]

Sorry- also they do have a reliable sign in/out system on the (very nice) dive deck...they also had someone on the top deck watching the water whenever anyone was in. If you somehow came up away from the boat they'd come out in a dinghy to get you, but no one ever did because the anchor lines were easy to follow and the dive briefings made it very easy to get oriented with the site.