Nekton cruises liveaboard--trip report (long)

[Hilary]

I promised I would write a trip report once I returned from our recent trip to Belize aboard the liveaboard dive boat, the Nekton Pilot (http://www.Nektoncruises.com).

 

We've been avid cruisers for the past 13 years and were anxious to see how the liveaboard experience would compare to a conventional cruise experience. I have to say that basically the whole experience is different, with the only thing being the same is that you're on a boat on the water with a great crew tending to your every need. Here's my report:

 

We arrived late on Saturday in Belize City and were immediately greeted by a Nekton employee upon exiting customs. They took our bags, we loaded into a van and went to the Princess Hotel to wait until pickup at 7pm for embarkation. We asked Jeff (our purser) where to eat dinner, and he recommended a really yummy place about 2 blocks down the road, which we were pleased to report had excellent (though pricey) food. At 7pm the van arrived at the Princess and along with 11 other folks, we boarded the van for the Pilot. First we stopped at a grocery store so we could buy alcohol, beer, snacks, soft drinks, or whatever we wanted, but we purchased nothing since we had brought a small bottle of rum from home (Nekton does not provide alcohol or soft drinks). We arrived at the commercial pier to board the Pilot at about 8pm, and after having our photographs taken and being given name tags, we went to our rooms for a few minutes to unpack and get our lifejackets for the muster drill.

 

Our cabin was large by liveaboard standards, but basically about 1/2 the size of a regular Celebrity cabin. We had a queen sized bed, 3 windows (not portholes), a small closet, a shelf area, a sink/vanity, and a small bathroom with a shower and toilet. Very comfortable for 2 people since we were there to basically just sleep and change clothing.

 

Packing for our trip was very easy. Besides our dive gear, we each packed 2 shorts, 4 t-shirts, a pair of sweat pants, 2 bathing suits, 3 pair of underwear, a hat, and our personal toiletry items. I wore a ponytail all week, so grooming was a snap. On the plane we wore sandals and that was the only time we wore shoes on the entire trip....literally. You will wear a bathing suit all day until you're done diving, then shower and put on "real" clothing or your pajamas, depending on if you night dive or not. I have a Chammyz shirt that I wear as a cover-up while diving and I needed it to stay warm when the wind picked up or it was too cloudy.

 

After the muster drill, we gathered in the dining room and had a boat briefing. That took about an hour, and the crew was introduced and basic procedures were reviewed. Since it was about 10:00 by then and we were tired from a long travel day, we hit the sack immediately after the briefing.

 

The next morning we were up by 7:00 for a hot breakfast. Suffice it to say that the food all week was excellent, that you will NOT lose weight on a Nekton cruise, and that you will eat things like turkey with all the trimmings, prime rib, lobster, shrimp, great soups, lasagna, super yummy desserts, etc. Oh yeah, and at 10:00 every morning there were hot, fresh cookies to enjoy!

 

Basically our days went like this: Awake at around 7:00 for breakfast. Dive briefing on the sun deck. Dive #1. Have a fresh cookie or two and hang out. Dive #2. Change into a dry bathing suit and eat lunch. Dive briefing. Dive #3. Have a snack/hang out/lay out/read/socialize, whatever on the sun deck. Dive #4. Shower and put on dry clothing for dinner. Eat dinner. Watch a presentation by the crew (or we would watch a movie on our portable DVD player in our cabin). Go to sleep....REPEAT the next day. The Pilot also had dawn diving most days at 6:15 and night dive each night, but we don't dive in the dark so didn't participate in these.

 

Mid-week we had the opportunity to visit the bird sanctuary at Half Moon Caye and see the Red Footed Booby Birds, but we declined, choosing to dive instead. That was the only land excursion opportunity on this itinerary.

 

Nekton promotes itself as having "no seasickness" boats. The boats are a SWATH design (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull), which basically means it's an 80' long, 3 story box that sits on 2 pontoons. The pontoons are submerged and ride under the surface of the water, giving a much smoother ride than a catamaran, which rides on the surface. In rough weather, the pontoons can be lowered farther into the water to create an even smoother ride. Although I'm sure that there's no such thing as a "no seasickness boat", as someone who has seasick issues, I can say with 100% accuracy that the Pilot proved her stability to us on this trip. On Wed. a big storm came in that caused about 10' seas. Although I wore my "patch" all week, I believe that had we been on a regular boat that I would have probably gotten sick during this storm. There was another liveaboard boat close by (Peter Hughes’ Sun Dancer II) that has a regular hull design that we watched pitch and yaw, to the point where everyone on our boat was commenting that the other boat likely had a lot of sick passengers that evening who weren’t enjoying a lobster dinner like us. ;-)

 

The boat features a huge sundeck that has a freshwater hot tub, cubbies for your dry stuff, a covered area where wetsuits were hung from, tables and chairs, and deck lounge chairs. The second deck contained 7 cabins the galley, the salon, and the dining room. Meals were served buffet style, but at dinner you had table cloths and if you wanted seconds a crew member would bring it to you. Jugs of different drinks were always available on the buffet with ice tea, crystal light, grape drink, and punch being fairly standard daily. Since you want to stay hydrated when you dive, everyone was constantly filling their glasses and drinking all day. Below the drinks was a huge ice chest that was kept full. The boat makes its own fresh water, so there was always water available for ice and showers. In the salon there was a computer, a large flat-screen TV, and a VCR/DVD player, along with lots of fish ID books, games, and a bookshelf with lots of books and videos to borrow. Outside on this deck were 2 camera tables and 2 camera rinse buckets, as well as a wetsuit rinse tank that was changed regularly.

 

The next deck down features more passenger cabins and crew cabins. On the back of the boat is a dive deck that is on hydraulics and is lowered to water level for diving, raised while the boat is underway. There are 2 hot showers just above the dive deck and warm towels are always available. Diving is super easy: gear up and either jump off the side (about 5’ drop) or walk down the stairs into the water. Your gear was always set up on your tanks, and all you had to do was leave your first stage off and the crew would use a whip to do an airfill. Nitrox was available.

 

The diving in Belize is mostly wall diving. Navigation was super easy and keeping our computers out of the red was even easier. Typical profile for us was to drop down the wall to depth (70-80’ usually), then work our way along the wall while slowly ascending. Turn around and make our way back to the boat either on top of the reef (35-50’ deep usually), or along the topside of the wall, then burn our tanks down to 500psi while exploring under the boat. With Steel 95 tanks not only did you have plenty of air, but you also got to take a good 6 pounds off your weight belt. :-) We dove 4 times a day (except Wed because of the storm) on air, and our computers never even got into yellow for nitrogen loading. So you definitely CAN dive this itinerary on air and not miss anything.

 

The dive sites were excellent to a fault. The reefs were extremely healthy, they were covered in hard and soft coral, huge barrel sponges, sea fans, and all sorts of other types of sponges. There were huge schools of fish of so many different varieties that we needed the fish ID book after diving to identify them all. We saw a few turtles and eagle rays, but lots of eels, crabs, and lobsters. Our search for a seahorse was futile, but it was fun looking.

 

Clearly anyone reading this understands by now that this is a scuba diving vacation and nothing more. If you don’t dive, or you don’t want to dive 3-5x a day for 6 days straight, this is not the type of “cruise” for you. However, my husband and I have definitely found a new way to cruise. We loved the informality, being able to really get to know the crew and other passengers, and the liveaboard lifestyle. As a matter of fact, by day three we had decided the Bahamas will be our next “cruise”….with Nekton, and we can’t wait!

[bruce-r]

Thanks for the excellent trip report.

 

How many passengers were on the boat with you? I know a Nekton can take 32 passengers if all the cabins are full to double capacity, but if there were less, that would make the dive deck easier to work on.

[Hilary]

We had 14 divers....it was like having a private charter. :D Although we were spoiled rotten by the boat being only 1/2 full, it was clear pretty quickly that the ONLY place that boat could feel crowded with 32 divers is the dive deck. Also after the first day, everyone was diving a different profile/schedule, so the dive deck was often empty. We deduced that had the boat been full, this would have translated to a dive deck that only had a few people at a time gearing up and would very rarely be crowded. Either way, the prospect of 32 divers on a boat this size and well laid out will not dissuade us from booking another Nekton cruise.