The Providers

Air Canada (www.aircanada.ca),     Park 'n Fly (www.parknfly.ca),
Nekton Cruises (www.nektoncruises.com).

The Travel

Before heading down, I spoke to the Nekton head office and they told
me to meet the rep from the boat at the Post Office, just outside the
terminal at San Juan Airport. After we landed, I got directions to
said post office and went there. There was another person there
looking for the Nekton rep, but no Nekton rep. After about 5 minutes,
the rep walked over and said hello. He had some other passengers
gathered about 50 metres from us. Speaking of tunnel vision, we had
walked right by them on the way to the post office.

Our flight home was delayed 2 hours due to inclement weather in
Toronto. When we finally got home it was rather quite chilly, and a
couple inches of snow had fallen. It was a wise decision to splurge
and get the Valet Parking.

Nekton Cruising

This was our second trip with Nekton Cruises. Here (
http://www.pathcom.com/~bracuk/Trips/NektonPilotNorth.htm ) is a link
to the other report. As a liveaboard diveboat company, Nekton sets
itself apart with it's SWATH technology which is supposed to greatly
reduce the motion of the boat while at sea. On our earlier trip we had
very calm seas and a very smooth ride. On this trip, the seas were a
bit rougher and while the ride was fairly smooth, we could tell we
were on a boat.

Something else that sets Nekton apart is the nightly presentations On
our earlier trip we listened to presentations on coral, fish, turtles,
and sharks. We watched the very same presentations on this trip. That
is not necessarily bad, it is simply what happened. Other similarities
between the two trips include crew introducions at the start, and
polaroids of the crew and all passengers on a bulletin board.

Like the Nekton Pilot, the Nekton Rorqual is a short wide boat that
carries a lot of passengers - 34 to be exact. Like the Nekton Pilot,
the staterooms are spacious, the salon, dining area, and sundeck are
very roomy, and the dive deck is very cramped.

The Nekton Roqual also has a desktop computer on board that is
available to the passengers. First time I have ever seen that on a
dive boat. We used this computer for the photo contest.

Nekton Diving

Most of the dives were normal liveaboard style dives. These took place
at sites where Nekton had mooring lines in place. Basically, the dive
deck was open from ~0815 to 1145 hrs, from 1315 to 1745 hrs, and
during the night dive. Anyone could dive and return as they pleased
during those times

Nekton also has something called a live dive. We did three of these.

A live dive is done at a spot where there is no mooring line and there
is little or no expected current. The crew prepares the dive site by
tying a marker ball off on the bottom somewhere. Then they divide the
divers into two groups. The boat backs up near the marker, and
everyone in each group starts at once. The two groups enter the water
about 15 minutes apart. At the end of the dive, all divers are
supposed to gather at the marker ball. Then the boat backs up near it,
and the divers then swim to the boat, climb the ladder (fins on),
climb four stairs (also fins on), and then they are on the dive deck.
This last step is done in groups of four.

The first live dive went ok. Patti and I never did see the marker and
at the end of the dive, we surfaced a couple of hundred metres down
current of the boat. However, they do have a small chase/rescue boat
which came and got us. We didn't get a ride though, we got a tow. That
was sort of an interesting experience, especially since I was holding
a camera.

The 2nd live dive didn't go quite as well. The wind kept blowing the
big boat around and the divers had trouble swimming to it. It took
over an hour to recover all the divers.

The 3rd live dive was quite the adventure because there was a fairly
brisk current. This turned the marker line into a flagpole. I was in
the first group of divers and the second group of four to return to
the boat. Between the safety stop and waiting for the first group to
get away, I was on that line for 13 minutes. Then I spent another 5
minutes holding on at the surface waiting for the boat to get into
position.

Other liveaboard companies do these types of dives with skiffs. Of
course, they don't have 34 divers.

The third type of dive is what Nekton calls drift diving. I call it
guided diving. We did one of these

Drift dives are done when there is no mooring line and a strong
current is anticipated. Like live dives, the divers are divided into
two groups. Each group is assigned a lead divemaster and a trail
divemaster. The lead divemaster tows a marker. The concept is that all
divers from each group enter at once, follow the lead divemaster, and
surface at once. Then, like on the live dives, the boat backs up the
markers and the divers return four at a time.

Our drift dive went smoothly. There was no current, but who cares.

Other liveaboard companies do these types of dives with skiffs. Of
course, they don't have 34 divers.

The Itinerary

We dove Desecheo Island on Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday we dove off Mona and Monita Islands (they are close
together). On Friday morning we dove of the west coast of Puerto Rico.

A better itinerary would have been Desecheo on Sunday, Mona from
Monday to Thursday, and Desecheo on Friday morning.

The Dive Sites

The dive sites off Desecheo Island were rather nice. They were all
flat reefs, maybe some sand, which made navigation a challenge, but I
only got lost once. The depths were in the 50 to 70 ft range. Water
was warm and clear, nice for diving.

The dive sites off Mona Island were fantastic, equal to anything I
have seen in the Caribbean (and I am well travelled). While there were
some walls, it was nicer on top. The reefs were exceptionally lush.
Like Desecheo, the depths were in the 50 to 70 foot range, if you
stayed on the reef, and not the wall.

Monito Island was different. The part above the water looked like a
smaller version of Darwin Island in the Galapagos, vertical cliffs
coming out the water and a flat top. The part below the water was a
vertical cliff going straight down to a hundred or so feet, and then a
sand bottom. At one end of the island were some rather large reef
structures, coming up within 40 ft of the surface. The wall had lots
of stuff on it, but, it was so vertical it seemed two dimensional. The
reef structures, on the other hand, were great.

Monito was where we did our 3rd live dive, the one with the current.
Did I mention that Monito is a very small island. We entered at one
end, I never kicked at all, and drifted to the other end in about 25
minutes. Would have been really interesting if there was no line to
grab.

Other Stuff

Once again, it was our pleasure to take a vacation with rec.scuba's
very own Pat McDuffee and his lovely wife Charlotte.

At least five of the passengers brought laptops. The most popular
activity was photo editing. One guy had some sort of dive profile
program, and one lady appeared to be using a word processor
application to log her dives.

During the intitial introductions, it was announced that E6 processing
was available, and that everyone was invited to submit their best
slides for the Thursday night photo competition. By the end of diving
on Tuesday, not one roll of film was processed. There were however, at
least 7 divers with digital cameras, so we decided to go digital for
the photo competition, and use the desktop computer on the boat. Later
it was announced that all entries had to be unaltered, which didn't
bother me at all. I do my photo editing at home. But, all those guys
with laptops were scrambling to find their original images.

One contestent, showing a bit of humour, had earlier done the Mona
Island run ashore, and had some iguana photos. She had copied and
iguana image next to a lizardfish, and entered that one in the
competition. Uproarious laughter abounded, but the photo was
disqualified. By the way, my entry was 3rd of 5.

Black durgeons are very shy fish, and hard to photograph. Also,
whenever approaching a fish with a camera, there is always that
decision of when to click. The closer you get, the better the picture.
Also, the closer you get, the more likely it is that the fish will
bugger off. So there was this durgeon floating just off the wall. I
made one approach to about 4 ft away, took a picture, and backed off.
Then I made an approach to about 3 ft away, took a picture and backed
off. The fish was still there. Then I started another approach. Tap,
tap, tap on my shoulder. I turned to see what my wife wanted. She
signalled that I should try to get closer. I nodded ok, turned around,
and there was the fish, gone. By the way, here is the fish (
www.pathcom.com/~bracuk/underwater/durgeon.htm ).

Climbing the ladder was ok with or without fins, but coming up the
stairs was definitely easier without. At first, I de-finned on the tag
line. Then, after the first live dives where we had to come up with
fins, I continued to do so. At first, I Charlie Chaplined up the
stairs. By the end of the trip I was going up backwards. It was
easiest that way.

When we went to Monita for our one live dive, the Captain obviously
thought that the dive was too tough for some of the passengers, and
gave a dive briefing designed to discourage those people from
attempting it. It worked. Even though I enjoyed the dive, I am not
entirely happy over what happened. As far as I am concerned, we all
paid the same price, we should all have the same dive opportunities.
The captain should have stuck to sites he was sure we all could do. It
is not as if there was a shortage of easy, but still very nice dive
sites out there.

The second last dive of the trip was off the coast of Peurto Rico. The
viz was awful and once we found the reef, we were unimpressed. Too
much sand and rock, not enough coral and sponge. It just seem worth
staying down, so we surfaced after an 8 minute dive. This was also my
first ever tropical dive where I didn't see a fish.

The Final Words

Liveaboard diving is fun. Even though not everything in this report is
positive, it was a fun trip.

Dan Bracuk
If at first you don't succeed, you run the risk of failure.
The Best of rec.scuba http://www.pathcom.com/~bracuk/RecScuba/