TRIP REPORT FROM BELIZE JAN 2006

As many of you know, I am quite partial to liveaboard dive trips. This was my 6^th trip on the Nekton. Belize is one of my favorite destinations. The coral in the out islands is generally very healthy, the reefs are uncrowded and there are lots of fish.

Brent and I were the only ones who signed up for this trip despite the lure of escaping the cold weather here. All the travel arrangements went off without a hitch. No canceled flights, no last minute changes, no problems.

The weather in Belize was a little cooler than normal as a major cold front had just come through. But it was still in the upper 70s.

The Nekton Pilot was just as ugly as ever sitting at the dock. I was riding out to the boat with a van load of first time guests and it is always interesting to hear their first comments about the appearance of the boat. I like to give them the Nekton motto “she may be ugly, but she sure is slow”. There were 25 guests and 11 crew on the boat this time. 19 of the 25 were a group from a college in Kansas. Brent and I, 2 other single guys, and one couple who got moved in from another liveaboard rounded out the guests. Only Brent and I had ever been on the boat before. When I saw the captain was Ephey I was elated because he normally runs a pretty tight ship. After our last cruise I was not impressed with the captain who said “I drive the boat, others handle the small stuff”. And things to that effect. The cook, Leslie, had been on our last Belize cruise so we knew the food would be good. The other returning crewmember was Jeff. It was my 3^rd cruise with Jeff. He started as a divemaster, then got promoted to purser, and is currently working toward his captains license. It seems there are 2 classes of crew on the liveaboards. Those who come on just to see what it is like and have a no-strings-attached lifestyle for a while and those who really want to make a career out of it. The only unusual character on this cruise was the engineer Neal. He was a retired British army engineer who didn’t even dive! He was a real trip. Always joking around and always in good humor. The engineer is always easy to spot on a liveaboard. All the crew must wear the uniform shirt on duty which is white. His was always covered with grease, grime, muck, etc. I told him he should get a black shirt so he wouldn’t stand out so much. We had one newer divemaster from the Czech republic who was really cute and quite nice although she was still feeling her way out on the boat. There was a divemaster who got on the boat with us and he really seemed to be lost at first (however when one of the other divers had an emergency he did save the day with quick action).

The first problem became apparent when I entered my cabin for the first time. I took one step in and SQUISH. Soaking wet carpet and the smell to accompany it. OK, wet floors in a boat are not a good thing especially when you are down low like I was! Since there were no more cabins, I had no choice but to stay there. The captain was quick to send the engineer down to see what was up. Nothing was ever found except a lot of water. He thought someone spilled something when cleaning up. So I just laid down a bunch of towels. Nothing really ever dries out on a boat since they have chillers instead of regular air conditioners and the air is never really that dry.

So on to the diving. The dive deck as always opened at 8AM and we were free to dive our hearts’ content until 1145 when it was time to dry off and eat lunch. Normally there is kind of a mad rush at 8AM to get in the water, but since we had a load of college students on board things were a bit different. The hard core divers were waiting at the entrance to the dive deck for it to open while the students had left 930AM wake up calls. Some students I hardly ever saw. They tended to sleep much of the day and stay up playing games and watching TV much of the night.

During lunch the crew moves the boat to a new location. After lunch we got to dive again from 1PM until 545. then dinner. After dinner, a presentation and then a night dive.

The second problem was that the weather was playing tricks with us and we had to deviate from the schedule a bit. We had to move a couple times after the first dive because it was getting too rough (some said) and some of the late night partiers were getting seasick. The captain did come to me and apologize once. He said “I know you guys (Brent and I) are not having any trouble here, but the others are and I have to do what the majority wants”. So we moved to a calmer site which wasn’t as clear. One time we had anchored in a sheltered spot only to see a wall of white silty water moving towards the dive site. The vis would have been zero. So we picked up and moved again losing a dive in the process. It could have been worse. The Dancer was moored nearby and they lost 2 days of diving due to rough seas. They didn’t even get to eat dinner one night because all the food fell on the floor and all the plates broke!

The rain came on Wednesday and I was glad I had brought along my sweats. After 5 dives during the day in 77F water, it is tough to warm up if there is no sunshine. Of course there were only 4 of us on the boat doing every dive. Even in the worst conditions, Brent and I were still diving even if it was just in the sand under the boat. However, on the one “sand” dive I found a batfish, a pipefish, stingrays, garden eels, conch, and permit. So even a nothing dive is a good one in Belize. All of our dives were moored dives and most were wall dives. The top of the wall was typically in 45-50 feet of water, although in a few sites it was shallower. They tended to pick the shallower sites in the afternoon. The coral formations were mostly spur and groove or just plains of coral with isolated heads sticking up. There were a lot of sea fans and gorgonians which was a nice change from Cozumel where they are mostly gone. Tropical fish were quite abundant and so were sea turtles and eagle rays the week we were there. The only shark seen was a big hammerhead by me and Brent. No photo though L. Surprisingly we saw very few moray eels this trip. Not sure why. Night dives were great, although the third problem soon became apparent when they informed us they were now charging $3 for each light stick for night divers. They wouldn’t let us dive without them. Of course we all have tank lights AT HOME which we didn’t bring along since on the previous 5 cruises they have always supplied lightsticks for free. Penny ante crap like that makes us unhappy and it is a poor business decision.

To their credit they finally got the photo contest run in a proper manner. Photos are submitted without names and the people vote solely on the photo rather than the photographer. Brent was my only real competition. I won with a cool toadfish shot. We heard toadfish all week, but only found one.

Despite the rough conditions, rain, and annoyances like the wet room and expensive lightsticks, the cruise was quite enjoyable. The crew attitude was night and day compared to the last cruise in Cay Sal and that helped a lot. I look forward to my next Nekton cruise.