North St Lucia Diving

[NYCrecdiver]

Hi all,

I will be going to St. Lucia in December and would like to get some diving in.
We are staying in Rodney Bay up North but is seems that most diving is 2 hours driving South (Soufriere). Anybody has experience with a scuba outfit in the North of the island? Or you recommend I go with an outfit near Soufriere instead?

Thanks for any experience you can share!

 

[living4experiences]

Having been to St. Lucia on a previous cruise, I wanted to make a dedicated dive trip there. I have done a lot of research for a trip I booked in January 2023. The Soufriere area is where you want to stay to be close to the best dive sites in the marine park. It is, indeed, a long drive from the north and the roads are very curvy from what I've read. There's only two dive ops I've found down there, Scuba St. Lucia/Dive St. Lucia (one company) and Action Adventure Divers, www.aa.divers.net. They are vastly different in their service provided. Scuba St. Lucia has the kind of dive boat I prefer, easy on and off, among other things, and they have Nitrox. Action Adventures is a bit more primitive, but they are located right on Soufriere beach. Their website is not very comprehensive and I don't know if they have Nitrox. From TripAdvisor pictures, the boat looks like a single motor, wooden fishing boat.

Scuba St. Lucia takes dive bookings only if you stay at Anse Chastenat or Jade Mountain, very high-end properties. Anse Chastenat's price for a single diver, which is me, package for 7 nights is $5749, a little too rich for me. Plus, my trip was going to be 11 days, with 9 days of diving, so the price tag would be much higher. I only found this out AFTER booking my hotel in Soufriere and the flights. I've never had this happen before, where a dive operation will snub the general public from diving with them. They must not be hurting for tourism dollars post-COVID. Thankfully, I have free cancellation of both the hotel and flights.

Dive Fair Helen is in Marigot Bay, and Scuba Steve's/Dive St. Lucia is in Rodney Bay. I've read the best diving is in Soufriere, and Dive St. Lucia charges $12.50 extra for fuel plus $5 MP fee to go south.

When I spoke with Dive Fair Helen, they recommended to stay in Soufriere because they don't go down there.

The onsite dive shop at the Sandals resort limits your dives to 30 minutes.

Also, if you stay in the Soufriere area, the airport is only 30-40 minutes away versus 2 hours to the northern resorts on curvy roads.

 

[NYCrecdiver]

Quick reporting back on what I ended up doing.
First of all, when staying North of St Lucia , it's not really practical to drive to the South of the island to dive the good sites with an operator there. The car ride is unpleasant, takes a long time, especially when there's traffic in and around the capital city.
I ended up booking with Scuba Steve's, located walking distance from our hotel in Rodney Bay:

• All in all a good experience.
• Though they answered a few questions I had, they were somewhat slow replying to my emails.
• I didn't rent their gear so cannot comment on that.
• They had only a limited number of tanks with DIN valve available. Some divers had to use an adaptor which I refused because I informed them ahead of time in my email that I will be needing DIN tanks. The guys didn't want to take the valve inserts out because of being worried they might not be able to screw them back in. I don't know whether that's a typical/reasonable concern or maybe it says something about their equipment servicing.
• The boats were comfortable and fast with 2 big outboard engines. The ride to the South of the island took around 40 minutes. Good I had a long sleeved fishing shirt with hood so not having to deal with sun screen.
• The briefing was OK though not the better ones I had. Basic safety was covered, pairing up with buddy, dive profile, etc. Not much info though on sealife to expect. The guide didn't really go out of his way to point out things during the dive.
• During the ride to the dive sites they handed out bottled water and between dives they had some snacks for us which was nice. First day snacks even included homemade sandwiches. Very tasty and it was a bummer they didn't have them the second day.
• After a first dive one of our group lost his flashlight, the guides put on their gear and went down looking for it. Definitely not expected and nice of them to do that.

When I visit St Lucia again, I would not hesitate to dive with them again.