Grand Cayman
Nancy Zupancic
Diving with Red Sail Sports
We woke up to a beautiful day in Grand Cayman.
My sister and I booked a certified scuba dive through the ship. My
brother and his family were going on a tour of Hell, the turtle farm and
then to the beach.
The dive tour was with Red Sail Sports. This was a first rate dive op
and I would use them again. However, we did not have a first rate
experience. There is always the debate, should you dive with the ship or
book a dive operator privately. Well today would be an argument to book
a dive on our own.
One of the reasons we booked with the ship was because you have to
tender in Cayman and by the time you get to shore most of the dive trips
have already gone out or you could do a shore dive.
We had not gone on a dive since last year we were put in the less
experienced group, even though we are advanced divers. I would not mind
so much but we had a dive guide who only lived in Cayman for two weeks,
so unfortunately, she did not know the dive sites as well as they
usually do. This particular site is on the famous Cayman wall and we
were supposed to go through three swim through and then dive along the
wall. What happened was we got through one swim through and another
diver was already low on his air and we had to go back to the boat.
Usually what happens in this situation is we swing around so the diver
knows where the boat is and they do their safety stop and go back to the
boat. The rest of the group would continue on. In this case the dive
guide stayed there and after a very short period of time she wanted us
to go back to the boat and we still had 2000 psi. There was a mutiny
right there in the depths and we shared our displeasure with the captain
once we were back on board. We were then moved into the other group for
the second dive. I am still mad as that could be the last time I get the
opportunity to see the Cayman wall. After that the second dive was quite
excellent.
After the morning of diving we tendered back to the ship to drop off our
gear and then headed straight back into Georgetown.
There were way too many ships in that day. The main areas of Georgetown
were packed. The traffic was horrible. If you were on a private shore
excursion make sure the tour is in the morning and give yourself plenty
of time to get to the pier through all the bad traffic.