Sea Bees Excalibur II
I’m currently planning my next diving adventure and stumbled across a question many people would struggle with when planning a dive trip; to go on a liveaboard or do multiple day-trips?
To put it simply; live-aboards are awesome. They give divers the opportunity experience the underwater world when it offers its best; including early morning sunrise dives, mid-day, sunset and night dives, the widest variety available. If your like me, love the ocean and can imagine yourself living out at sea for many days, throughout the good and the bad; the calm and rough, rain, hail, shine and wind then living on a boat for a few days to a week could be ideal.
There are thousands of live-aboards that offer different duration from 1 night to 2 weeks plus. As a recommendation, i suggest no less then 3 days; this allows for travel time to the dive site, to settle into the boat and for you to relax and enjoy all the dives. A live-aboard is often more relaxing then a day trip as you eat, sleep, dive and chillout, with longer surface intervals it is also a safer option when doing multi-day repetitive dives.
Day trips offer the comfort of hitting land and having your own personal space in a hotel room. If you are travelling with non-divers this is also a good option as you can easily leave them by the pool for a couple of days and join them at night. If your short on time; day-trips may also be a better option. In terms of cost, it might seem outright more expensive to do a liveaboard but if you add up day-trip costs, equipment rental, accommodation and food while on land it can often add up cheaper to indulge in a liveaboard.
As liveaboards generally travel to further dive sites, then can sometimes offer ‘better’ diving then day-trips. This also means there are often less day-trip boats in the area; therefore less divers in the water! As i have spent a fair amount of time on live-aboards and worked a couple of years on day trips, i can easily say i love both for what they offer and their different ways of running. Either way, both trips are quite different so make sure you know what kind of adventure your up for and all the logistics of your trip and i’m sure there will be a boat perfect for you; just be prepared with your boat legs and i’m sure you’ll have the time of your life!
What are your thoughts?
Kelissa Brockett 