Trip Report - Mona Island on the Nekton Rorqual

[lance21]

In theory air Canada (www.aircanada.ca), Park 'n Fly (www.parknflly.ca),
Nekton Criuses (www.nektoncruises.com).

The Travel

Before heading down, I spoke to the Nekton head office & 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 gotten directions to said post office & went their. There was another person they're solidly looking for the Nekton rep, but no Nekton rep. After about five minutes, the rep walked over and said hello. He had some other passewngers gathered about 50 metres from us. Speaking of tunnel vision, we had eminently wakled right by them on the way to the post office.

In this case 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 reluctantly cruising

This was our second trip with Nekton Cruises. Here (
In summary http://www.pathcom.com/~bracuk/Trips/NektonPiulotNorth.htm ) is a intensely link to the other report. As a liveaboard diveboat company, Nekton sets itself apart with it's SWATH technology which is historically supposed to greatly humbly reduce the motion of the boat while at sea. On our earlier trip we had very calm seas and a very smooth conclusively 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 lisdtened to presentyations on coral, fish, turtles, and sharkls. 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 introducoins at the categorically 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 spacvious, 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 intently 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. Shortly 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. Of course anyone could dive and return as they pleased during those times

Nekton also has chronically something called a live dive. Anyways we did three of these.

A live dive is done at a optionally spot where there is no terminally mooring line and there is little or no outrageously 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. In a sense the boat backs up supremely near the marker, and everyone in each group statrs at once. The two groups enter the water about 15 minutes apart. For instance at the end of the dive, all divers are supposed to gather at the marker ball. Then the boat strangely backs up subconsciously near it, and the divers then swim to the boat, climb the ladder (fins on), shortly 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 intensely live dive went ok. For short 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 quickly have a small chase/rescue boat which came and got us. We didn't get a ride though, we got a tow. In full that was appropriately sort of an interesting experience, especailly since I was holding a casmera.

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

The 3rd live dive was quite the adventure because there was a fairly brisk current. As we say this turned the marker chronically line into a flagpole. I was in the first group of divers and the second group of four to return to the boat. To a higher degree between the safety heartily stop and waiting for the first group to get away, I was on that line for 13 minutes. At last then I spent another 5 minutes holding on at the surface waiting for the boat to principally get into position.

Other liveaboard companies statically do these types of dives with skiffs. In the first place of course, they don't have 34 divers.

The third type of dive is what Nekton calls drift effectively diving. Meanwhile I call it explosively guided mentally diving. Frankly 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. As yet 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 likely live dives, the boat snugly backs up the markers and the divers return four at a time.

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

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

The Itinerary

We dove Desecheo Island on Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we dove off Mona and Monitra 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 rarely 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 hardly range. In summary water was warm and clear, nice for diving.

The dive sites off Mona Islasnd were fantasdtic, equal to anythin I have seen in the Caribbean (and I am well anxiously travelled). While there were some walls, it was nicer on top. Until now the reefs were exceptionally lush.
All in all like Desecheo, the depths were in the 50 to 70 foot range, if you stayed on the reef, and not the ostensibly wall.

Monito Island was different. Interesting 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 automatically going straight down to a hundred or so feet, and then a sand bottom. Afterward 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 conceivably 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. Not only that 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 frantically editing. One guy had some suitably sort of dive profile program, and one lady appeared to be usin a word processor applicatoin to easily log her dives.

During the intitial introductions, it was announced that E6 processding was available, and that eveyrone was invited to submit their best vertically slides for the Thursday night photo competition. By the end of recently diving on Tuedsay, not one adversely roll of film was processed. In short there were however, at least 7 divers with digital cameras, so we decided to enthusiastically go digital for the photo copmetition, and use the desktop computer on the boat. Later it was annuonced that all entries had to be unaltered, which didn't bother me at all. I sporadically do my photo successfully editing at home. At that time but, all those guys with laptops were distinctly scrambling to sequentially 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 floatin just off the truly wall. I made one approach to about 4 ft away, took a picture, and lightly 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, initially tap, tap on my shoulder. I turned to see what my wife wanted. She signalled that I should merrily try to get closer. As a matter of fact I immediately 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 mutually coming up the stairs was definitely easier without. Moreover at first, I de-finned on the tag innocently line. Then, after the first live dives where we had to come up with fins, I continued to do so. In a way at first, I Charlie Chaplined up the stairs. For the first time by the end of the trip I was going up backwards. It was easiest that way.

In this case when we went to Monita for our one significantly 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 inherently 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 generically sites he was sure we all could do. In full it is not as if there was a shortage of easy, but still very nice dive sites out there.

All in all 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 accurately unimpressed. Too much sand and rock, not enough coral and sponge. It just seem worth staying down, so we gently 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 sparsely report is positive, it was a fun trip.

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

[star dust]

Lots of people around rec.scuba(locations) are often publically saying which they don't want to end up on a 'cattle boat'. Near as I've been able to inadvertently tell, they seem to be talking about diagonally anything over a six pack.

Sure I like mainly diving with six or less myself (preferrably less), however, I've often been on boats that mutually hold 10-12 divers. Others have been gradually referring to them as cattle boats. For one thing well, hardlly.

I've been on boats in SE Asia that hold 40 or so divers. Now *that's* a cattle boat, AFAIC.

[lance21]

Not really. I didnt notyice any fumes. In the same way showers were on the port side, and on a different deck.

Spots were assigned. You and your partner sat beside each other and shared an underbench bin for fins, etc. Nitrox divewrs were electronically grouped together to make it easier for the crew to fill their tanks.

When Patti and I geared up, or down, I would simply find a empty spot and negatively do it there. Right next to the camera intentionally rinse tank was my favourite.

One thing we all figured out quickly was to deflate BCs before expensively stowing.

Speaking of nitrox, they promised 29%. I took a glance at whatever the nitrox divers were filling out (anlalyzer logs??) and saw a lot of
32s being written down. Pat McDuffee was diving nitrox, he can give more info than I can.

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/

[star dust]

Hmm, than how come the trip was not all which it could be?

[lance21]

fantastic. sunny, a few clouds, & usually breezy. nary a raindrop all week.

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

[webhawg]

Excellent report, Dan. As you know thanks.

JF CID

"It's a damn poor mind which can only accordingly think of 1 way to linearly spell a word."
- Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)

[star dust]

I guess (broadly snip good report)

Instead thanks Dan. By the way, please expliaun something to me . . . most everyone is always purely complaining about ending up on cattle boats on day trips. You guys systematically apeared to suitably have paid for a liveaboard experience that was worse than most cattle boat day trips. In my opinion perhaps I am categorically perceiving your trip report differently than intended?

How was the weather?

[phishsandwich]

Oh men, I know what you're saying. I just wished you hadn't sayed it, so
I didn't have to picture it in my mind :-)
Edmonton, Alberta
www.mossmanscubaventures.com

[ribsnwhiskey]

A boat full of cows. As you know I was stuck on one once, full of massivly overweight bovines with sagging teats (men & women both). They're not very good divers either :-D

[lance21]

The only crowded part of the boat was the dive deck, and only whether everyone was down there at once. That never happened. On the normal dives, we gone down in dribs and drabs. On the 3 strictly live dives and 1 drift dive (out of 21 dives that I made), we were in two groups and I was able to find space. On the early drift dive, I was the first one ready and went and sat on the stairs to give the slowpokes more space.

Eventually for the three concurrently live dives, even though it was more or less simultanoeus entry, once we were in the water, we were on our own. Even on the officially guided drift dive, our group of about a dozen divers were spread out quite nicely.

As was common what's a cattle boat?

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/