New to snorkeling. Buy fins?

[gleninpa]

Hello,

My family of 5 will be going to Bermuda in October. After seeing the prices of all day rentals, I figured I would buy the equipment rather than rent with the assumption that the kids will enjoy it and want to do it more than one day. Thus my logic for buying rather than renting.

My 3 daughters are 7, 11, and 13 years old. Since they’ve never done this before, should I just buy the mask and snorkel or should I also get fins? Our plan is to try it out in the calm bays and not the open ocean.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. While I’m at it, I’m planning on going to Tobacco Bay for snorkeling. Any other good places for my girls?

[SCUBA Mark]

Since you are planning to snorkel a lot, you will probably save a lot of money buying equipment.

 

I think the kids need fins. It makes it a lot easier to get around and they will enjoy it a lot more.

 

You can get youth sets of mask, fins, and snorkel fairly cheap from Sam's, Walmart, or Sporting good stores. You can also order them on the internet. For the local stores, this is summer stock so they are probably clearing them out right now. If you wait too long, they will be gone.

 

Mark

[gleninpa]

Mark,

You pretty much said what I was thinking. Thanks for confirming that for me.

[alwalaska]

We live in central ohio and we decided to do an intro to snorkel class that we found at our local dive center when we were looking for snorkel equipment. It was a lot of fun and very helpful.

[scubaran]

Hello,

My family of 5 will be going to Bermuda in October. After seeing the prices of all day rentals, I figured I would buy the equipment rather than rent with the assumption that the kids will enjoy it and want to do it more than one day. Thus my logic for buying rather than renting.

My 3 daughters are 7, 11, and 13 years old. Since they’ve never done this before, should I just buy the mask and snorkel or should I also get fins? Our plan is to try it out in the calm bays and not the open ocean.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. While I’m at it, I’m planning on going to Tobacco Bay for snorkeling. Any other good places for my girls?

 

I enjoy snorkeling/diving at Elbow Beach Resort. It's great for kids since it's white sand beaches with clean bathrooms and lockers, a beach side restaurant and a dive shop all on site (see picture below). It's about a 3 minute taxi ride from downtown Hamilton. When you get to the resort, tell the driver to drive you down to the beach. There's a road that snakes down the hill to the beach where you go down a short flight of stairs. The guys in the dive shop can point out the best entry points and places to snorkel. The reef is just off shore so it's an easy swim out (assuming the waves aren't up that day, sometimes the surf line can be tough to get through but it's very smooth once you get out a short way). If the kids get bored snorkeling the beach is fun and the beach restaurant is fairly cheap and the food is good. To get back to Hamilton, just walk up the hill to the resort entrance and taxis should be waiting for fares or the bellman can call you a taxi. There's no fee to use the beach.

 

Randall

[gleninpa]

Wow, that looks nice!

Thanks.

[scubaran]

Wow, that looks nice!

Thanks.

 

It IS nice (been there three times in the past and always had a good time at the beach). It is open to the ocean but the water is usually calm as glass with lots and lots of fish in fairly shallow water (the max depth very far out from the beach is 40ft. which is very shallow for the ocean) and very clear vis.

 

Randall

 

P.S. you can check out my Bermuda Scuba diving from Elbow Beach at:

http://www.randallgamby.com/bermuda-index1.html

 

to give you an ideal of what the reef looks like. :) Most of them were taken both from shore and a boat dive farther out.

 

Randall

[gleninpa]

Beautiful pictures! What kind of camera were they taken with?

[scubaran]

Beautiful pictures! What kind of camera were they taken with?

 

Thanks! Just a Canon point and shoot in an underwater enclosure with a single strobe that triggers off the internal flash of the camera. :)

 

Randall