Travelling to Tahiti via Cruise Ship

[cruzbound]

Hi All,

We will be going on a cruise to Hawaii and Tahiti in September 2023. I have knowledge of the Hawaiian islands since we have been there before via land vacation. However, we have never been to Tahiti so I was hoping for some insight there. We are Advanced PADI certified and there are two of us (but we don't need private dive excursions).

We will only be stopping in Raiatea (overnight) and Moorea (from 7 AM to 5 PM and this is tender port). I have communicated with Hemisphere Sub on Raiatea and our timing there allows us to dive at least a two-tank dive with them (since we are there overnight). Has anyone ever used them? Thoughts/opinions? Any other dive operator recommendations for this island?

The main problem I am having is on Moorea - it appears that a few of the dive shops I have contacted said our timing does not work (Moorea Blue Diving, Nemo'z). Does anyone have any other dive shop recommendations? Anyone that can adjust/be flexible for us on the timing? I don't think getting back to the port/tender is a problem, it is the start time - I think we need someone who can probably start a dive at 8:30 AM instead of 7 AM as there is no way we can get off the ship, tender in and meet someone at 7 AM since we are arriving at 7 AM.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
cruzbound

 

[Rick Brant]

Does your ship offer a SCUBA shore excursion there? If so that would meet your timing needs.

We did a mix of boat-offered and direct-booked dives when we visited French Polynesia on Windstar. Both options worked fine. On Raiatea specifically we did not have a dive outing planned, but we did a land-based excursion in the morning and I mentioned to our guide that I wanted to dive the Nordby wreck, and she told me that her husband was a SCUBA guide. She set up a meeting for that same afternoon and he picked me up right off the cruise ship dock with a dive rig ready to go. Ten minutes later we dropped onto the Nordby. It's practically on the shore and not super-deep so it is a very easy dive to get to. Not the most amazing dive we did in FP but it was still very fun. Unfortunately I don't have contact info for the person I dove with.

 

[Altamira]

I have used Top Dive on several of the Polynesian Islands with good results, and I believe they have the largest presence of any dive shop in the islands. On a Windstar cruise, Top Dive was the ship's dive op.

 

[cruzbound]

Hi all

So we are going on Norwegian cruise line and believe it or not they don’t have any dive excursions for their passengers to sign up for. Kind of crazy. I have never been on a cruise line that doesn’t offer scuba diving excursion.

I will check Top dive.

Rick - if you happen to think of the persons name please contact me.

Thanks all.

Cruzbound

 

[Guitarcrazy]

We just returned from diving with Moorea Blue and they are outstanding. We met at the dive shop at 0730, and typically left the dock between 0745 and 0800. They do afternoon dives on Wednesdays. You may want to communicate with Diane at Moorea and see if they might make an exception to their departure time. I really enjoyed the diving with Moorea Blue.

 

[living4experiences]

Did you end up finding the dive ops you were looking for? I'm heading there on a cruise in April and running into the same issues of timing.

 

[cruzbound]

Hi living4experiences,

We did dive in Moorea and Raiatea. We went with Hemisphere Sub in Raiatea and they were good. Very happy with our dive. In Moorea we booked a private dive because of our timing. It wasn't cheap but we wanted to dive there so we bit the bullet. We used Scubapiti Moorea. Email with them wasn't top notch but they got the job done communicating with us. The diving was EXCELLENT - I really wanted to see Nemo in the French Polynesian and we got to see several in Moorea. It was really nice that it was just my husband, myself, the dive guide and skipper. We did not dive in Papeete because we had to fly home. We did the snorkeling with whales and were lucky to snorkel a couple of times with a mama humpback whale and her baby. It was awesome. Not thrilled with the operator though - very hard to find them when we got off the ship, etc... I don't think the humpback whales are there in April, so we probably don't need a recommendation for this excursion.

I hope this helps. We did all shore diving in Hawaii on our own.

Have fun!

cruzbound

 

[chrisjur]

Did you end up finding the dive ops you were looking for? I'm heading there on a cruise in April and running into the same issues of timing.

The previous info given is pretty much valid. There are very few dive options on most of the islands and the shops that are there, while very good at what they do, are not necessarily high volume outfits that have a lot of boats going out every day. Thus, flexibility when it comes to timing can be limited.

Most importantly, don’t try to press your schedule with an independent excursion. If they run late, your ship will not wait for you. Someone on my ship in the Bahamas a few years ago learned this the hard way.

I’m shocked, however, that these ships are not offering dive excursions. When we cruised Windstar around French Polynesia two years ago, they offered diving every day at every island.

 

[loady]

Need to pay for dive booking in advance or they won’t hold the spaces