Nekton Rorqual Dive Report

I know, I said the trip was on the Nekton Pilot, but apparently the Pilot never made it out of drydock in time, so they sent the Rorqual. It was unusual to see half the same crew from my cruise in March still aboard. The first mate on the last cruise had been promoted to captain.

We almost didn’t make it due to bad weather in Houston that caused us to miss our connection to Belize. Continental was really on the ball, though, and had our boarding passes waiting for us when we finally did arrive. All that happened was that we waited in Houston instead of Belize. After seeing the supposedly wonderful casino/resort complex in Belize, I guess Houston airport wasn’t so bad. In some ways the scenery was better in Houston.

As always with a Nekton cruise the hassles end when you arrive at the door of the airport with your luggage. They take it and put it on the boat for you . They don’t let you on the boat right away because they are busy fueling, cleaning, stocking food, etc, so they drop you off at a “resort complex” to hang out for a few hours. At least we didn’t have to deal with our luggage. They even gave us discount coupons for the resort restaurant which, unfortunately, we didn’t remember until after we had paid and left. Oh well.

Once on board the boat we found our stuff already in our rooms. All we had to do was grab a beer and head to the orientation. Each crew member was introduced to us and the layout of the boat and the daily routine was explained. Following that we had a brief lifejacket drill and then the evening was ours.

A typical Nekton day starts off with continental breakfast at 6AM followed by a hot breakfast at 7. The dive briefing is given at 8AM and the dive deck opens shortly thereafter. There is unlimited diving from 830AM until 1145AM. Between dives there are warm towels and warm cookies waiting for you. After a buffet lunch there is another dive briefing (they move the boat during lunch) and then the dive deck opens from 1PM until 545PM. Dinner is at 6PM. The food is excellent and actually there is too much. As soon as you would finish one plate, there was a crew member offering to get you some more or bringing you dessert. Not a good place to be for those on diets!

Diving is very easy. You get suited up in your skin/wetsuit, etc up on the sun deck. You then just head down to the dive deck, slide on your fins, mask, and BC and you are ready to hit the water.

Unlike our recent trip to Mona, the seas were pretty much flat the whole week. We did have a few brief rain squalls with high winds, but they were usually over in just a few minutes.

Also unlike Mona, all the sites were moored dives. No drift diving at all. This made for a much more relaxed dive schedule.

The typical Belize dive site was a wall starting in about 40 feet of water sloping or dropping off to the abyss. The visibility was usually 70 feet or so. There was a little particulate matter in the water. Usually it was more apparent on the late afternoon dives when the sun was at a lower angle. The coral was very healthy on most sites and there were lots of sponges, sea fans, and gorgonians. Almost no coral bleaching was present. Also not present except on one particular dive, was trash on the reefs. No beer cans, fishing line, or anchor lines draped across the reefs that we typically see in more populated areas. I should clarify that. The areas were not totally unpopulated as most of the time we could see the Peter Hughes Sun Dancer II and the Belize Aggressor II on the horizon. There was quite a bit of fish life, too. Normally we would have a large school of a couple hundred horseeye jacks under the boat. Often a big grouper and barracuda would join them. It seemed that when we went out scouting for critters often they wound up right under the boat at the end of the dive. Lots of tropicals and quite a few green eels and sea turtles. Almost every night dive we had big tarpon hunting in our dive lights. All week long we kept hearing Mitzi the divemaster talking about toadfish and how they are seen in this or that area. Of course nobody saw one until the last day, but it was a really cool fish. I was able to lure it out of its hole and we got some good photos of it.

They normally adjust the clock to “boat time” so that you are not doing night dives at 530PM, etc. Our second afternoon dives typically ended up as twilight dives, though, which was actually kinda cool. By the time we were at dinner, it was usually pretty dark.

After dinner the dive deck opened for the night dive and then following the night dive there was often a slide show presentation about turtles, sharks, fish, etc by one of the divecrew.

There are few rules on the Nekton. No decompression diving, no diving deeper than 130 feet, and no diving after drinking alcohol. Other than that they leave you alone (unless you forget to sign back in on the dive board in which case they will embarrass you repeatedly).

There were a few gripes on this cruise, however. The dive briefings needed a megaphone to be heard over the kitchen exhaust fan. Those of us who got there late and had to sit way in the back could rarely hear the briefer. Some of the fixtures are getting a bit worn and are probably due for replacement. The water system broke down one day and the crew really had to put in some overtime to fix it. They got it running again, but unfortunately the air conditioner runs off the water system and it was a pretty warm and sticky evening for some, especially those unable to take showers after the night dive! Stuff does break occasionally, though, and I have to give the crew credit for the way they handled it. (It could have been worse, though. The Peter Hughes boat lost an engine and they had to miss most of a day of diving because they could only limp along at 8 knots and it took them all day to get back to port.)

Every time we take a Nekton cruise we start out as several small cliques and end up mostly one big group of friends. The environment is very conducive to meeting and hanging out with other divers on the boat. The staff couldn’t have been better. Very pleasant and very helpful. They really went out of their way to ensure we had a good time.

Ask anyone who has been on one of the Nekton cruises and they will tell you the same thing… it is a pricey trip, but well worth the money. I am planning to cruise again soon.