REVIEW - Nassau with Stuart's Cove (RCCL shorex)

[w&k]

Dive review – Stuart Cove’s Nassau, Bahamas

December 12, 2005 (RCCL Sovereign of the Seas)

 

Rating of 1-5 stars:

Overall **

 

People ***

Equipment **** (Phoecena)

Diving * (Felchers Wall * 78ft/34min Nari Nari ** 30ft/37min)

 

Beautiful water with not much under it, sort of like popcorn without salt and butter.

 

Personal dive biases: I am a Floridian with >300 dives, certification through rescue. My diving experience has been under all sorts of conditions, but I no longer dive rough, deep or cold water (why bother?), and avoid weekend warriors whenever possible. My diving preference is drifting on reefs, and I have been known to bring home a bug or two.

 

When we originally planned this cruise, we thought we would dive both CocoCay and Nassau as we had some diving buddies getting together. As our group grew, our divers shrank, so we were left with only one diver besides us, who had < 10 dives. This changed the parameters a bit, as we did not want to dive ‘off the beaten path’ when we had a new diver. From research, I found that Stuart Cove was the new operation for RCCL in Nassau, and decided to give it a try. The shorex markup was the same as booking the dive on the island ($95 vs $82 for a pre-paid online reservation).

 

Of course, my DH came down with a cold just before the trip, so there were just two of us left for the dive trip. We met on the pier at 8:00am or so, and swapped dive stories within the group. I discovered a couple of folks I had been diving with years ago down in south Florida, which was really neat. Eventually the Stuart’s Cove rep appeared, and we trudged down the loooooooonnnnnnggggg pier to the dive bus. I think a couple people are going to buy wheelie bags for their next trip. We crammed into the Stuart Cove minibus, and then stopped at a hotel to pick up a final 4 divers to fill in the seats that flip down in the aisle. The drive to the dive shop and boats took about 30 minutes or so.

 

When we arrived, we were funneled down a long dock to pick up gear (if needed), weights, and finally climb aboard to set up tank #1. We brought gear, so stopped for weights only. The fellow in the weight window did the classic “you don’t need that much weight…etc. etc. etc. We’ve all heard the spiel. What I was not aware of was that my buddy had a new wetsuit – 5 mil instead of 3 mil. If I had known that, I would have stopped the spiel in its tracks. The fellow tried it on me too, but took a careful look into my eyes and handed over my weights exactly as I specified without further comment.

 

Once on-board the boat (Phoecena), all the divers began to set up the first tank. The rental gear must have been fine, because I didn’t hear any problems, and couldn’t tell who had rental gear. Unfortunately, there were quite a few empty tanks and short fills on-board, so tanks were swapped to get everyone a half-decent fill. With the number of staff milling around & yakking to each other, it seems to me that someone could have grabbed a pressure gauge to check the fills on the boat. Anyway, I settled for short fills (2600 & 2700), because I knew I would not be needing much air on time-limit dives. The boat was nice and large, and we had 15 divers or so with an experience level much greater than I expected for a ship’s dive. Captain said we would have about a 10 min ride to dive site #1.

 

The dive briefing was brief – get on the tag line at the back, use descent line at middle of the boat if you like, stay with the divemaster (who gets in last), follow the DM over the wall to 80 foot max. Dive time 30 min max & do a safety stop. Water temperature 74 degrees. The captain warned of a current, so to drop fast or use the descent line.

 

We geared up and hopped in. Once I stopped gasping and spluttering from the freezing cold water working its way into my wetsuit, we headed upcurrent to the descent line. 74 degrees my a&&. The aforementioned bit of current helped me get warmer since I was too cold to warm my wetsuit in the traditional way. We took a slow and easy descent, and paddled around in easy circles looking at the wet rocks until the rest of the divers and the DM arrived. Absolutely beautiful water – clear and blue, shading to blue/black in the distance. We then headed over the edge with the group swirling around and between us. My mask became dislodged by some stray fins to the top and side of my head. When I got cleared and reset, who are these divers next to me? On the other side? Still kicking me in the head? What happened to my buddy? Crap. Slow survey of the group… there he is… by the divemaster and looking around for me. I’m sure I could have been mistaken for our DM (20 years ago, maybe). The DM and group shot down to 80 feet+ like they were giving away free money down there. I chased the group down to 80, grabbed my buddy, and we ascended to ~60 feet to stay out of the mess. I kept waiting for the good stuff to appear, but somehow it never did. Grabbed my camera and took a few pix, but gave up after about 10 minutes because I couldn’t find anything much to shoot. All of a sudden, the DM gave the turn-around signal, and we popped back over the top, and straight back to the boat. We were in the last few folks back onto the boat at 34 min bottom time and more than half my tank left.

 

Time for the wet diver’s choice of purgatory: sun and wind on the open deck, or shade and shelter. We switched over tanks, and figured out that if we huddled in just the right place, we could get some sun and not too much breeze. Surface interval was about 30 min, and we moved to a spot called Nari Nari. Dive briefing was brief again. 30-40 feet, reef below, plane that way out in the sand, do a safety stop, back on board in 40 min this time so we can make the schedule.

 

Geared up and splatted in again to what felt like considerably warmer water this time – about 73-74 degrees. The gentleman we had been diving with long years before joined up with us as his better half wasn’t feeling particularly well, and didn’t want to do the second dive. We took off in a series of lazy circles to get the lay of the reef. Unfortunately, it was mostly dead reef again. There were lots of fish fry in the nooks and crannies, but I could only find one shrimp, one arrow crab, and no regular crabs. It was also the day off for most of the fish. The best I could do was to get a few yellowtail, a handful of butterflyfish, some assorted tangs and a group of sergeant-majors. There were quite a few baby hard corals, and just a few sponges and sea fans. Probably the best sight of the trip was when I got a cramp in my foot, and made lots of strange contortions trying to stretch it out by holding my fin in all sorts of different positions and doing flips one-finned. Back on the boat with a dive time of 37 min and 2000 in my tank. Air is a terrible thing to waste.

 

Back on-board, we took apart our gear and stuffed it in the bags quickly, so we were ready to rock when we hit the pier. There are some nice picnic tables in the sun, so I ran for the showers to warm up and rinse off, and we then hung out and waited for the minibuses to start arriving to take us back. There were lots of bees buzzing around, so folks that are allergic might want to hang out somewhere else. Since we were in no hurry, we kicked back and swapped dive stories with the other folks who did not want to crowd on to the first two buses.

 

Was I disappointed in the diving? Yes. Would I try diving Nassau again? Sure. Every dive spot has good and bad days. Stuart Cove’s is a large operation, and they have some beautiful dive boats, a good facility, and some good people. The only part I don’t like is the restricted dive time, but that is common with larger operations.

 

My photos are posted at http://community.webshots.com/user/wendyandkeith

 

Cheers!

 

Wendy

[w&k]

photo address http://community.webshots.com/user/wendyandkeith/

 

sorry!

 

Wendy

[Hilary]

Thanks for posting, Wendy. Although I don't mind diving within a dive ops schedule most of the time, the dive times you posted are simply pathetic and IMO Stuart Cove isn't giving the diver their money's worth, especially with a 10 minute ride to the dive site.

 

You've definitely confirmed our decision to do a liveaboard with Nekton next year in the Bahamas instead of doing a land vacation.