Tobago on Wind Dancer


by Alan Ewart

Dive trips, especially those to far off places take a bit of planning! Tentative thoughts for this trip came together last autumn when Malcolm said he wanted to go on a trip a little off the beaten track to celebrate his rapidly approaching 50th birthday. We discussed a range of options and eventually settled on a live aboard trip on Wind Dancer the Tobago based boat from BSAC preferred travel partner Peter Hughes Diving.

We made a provisional booking and then met with Peter and Sean at the London Dive show to finalise the details. We were kindly offered a dive show discount as well as our BSAC discount. Sean arranged flights for us at a much better price then I had been able to secure myself and having got such a good deal we decided to opt for an upgrade on the flight booking Premium seats on the Excel flight. Everything arranged and paid for I then sat back to count the days to the trip.

At long last Friday 13th May arrived, Malcolm picked me up from home and we set off for the Gatwick Airport holiday Inn where I secured a triple room and 8 days parking for a bargain £99. As Mo was driving all the way down from Tyne and Wear Malcolm and I did the decent thing and got stuck into a great meal and a glass or two at a really excellent Tapas bar in Crawley. As an aside if you have never visited Crawley it is an experience everyone should have once in a lifetime!!! We got back to the hotel to meet up with Mo and to have a final drink or two. We three then retired to spend the first night of our holiday in what can only be described as an animal park! Debates will rage for years as to who snored the loudest!

On Saturday we made the short journey to Gatwick to meet up with Chris, the fourth member of our little party. On checking in we were told the aircraft had been downgraded and no premium seats were available - Bummer! Excel did give us two seats each and all the free drinks, improved meals etc that our Premium seats had paid for. It helped but was still uncomfortable on such a long flight. I was really glad we had bought premium seats because I would never have squeezed my 6'2" 15.5 stone frame into an ordinary seat. We did get premium seats on the way home and they were so much more comfortable. I'll never fly cattle class again on a long flight.

After a short stopover in St Kitts we arrived in Tobago to a warm sultry evening, high winds and rain!! We were greeted with cold towels and a cold beer and transferred to the boat. The transfer only took 15 or 20 Minutes. First impressions mean a lot and on arrival we were greeted by Lynne the guest services manager. After being shown to our comfortable cabins we were served an excellent dinner. At this point there were only 3 other guests onboard, Nina, a lovely Swiss lady who became the fifth member of our little band, and an American couple who were on their 15th (yes fifteenth) Peter Hughes liveaboard. The rest of the guests were American and had got stuck in Trinidad after missing a connecting flight.

We stayed in Scarborough Harbour overnight and sailed a couple of hours to Mount Irvine Bay early Sunday morning. After meeting the rest of the staff we were ready for the first dives of the week. Most people would agree that the staff on the boat goes a very long way to making or breaking a liveaboard trip. Without exception the staff on this boat were incredible, friendly, happy and most of all fun. All our gear was transferred to one of two dive tenders for the diving and it remained on the tender for the whole week, being hosed down by the staff at the end of each days diving. Prior to the dive we were given a comprehensive briefing on both the site and the safety procedures. It was pointed out that the dive guides were there to guide not nanny, we were responsible for our own profiles and were asked to stick to our qualification levels and a 40-metre limit. We had been told that the diving on the Caribbean side of the Island was OK but unspectacular with the better diving being around Speyside on the Atlantic side of the Island. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of diving available. With the reefs covered in abundant sponges, hydroids and soft corals, plenty of reef- life, a water temperature of 28 degrees and visibility in the 20M plus range what more could you want? Rusty Metal I hear you shout! Well we got that on our second dive. The Maverick is a sunken Ro-Ro ferry teaming with life and cleared to allow easy access to car deck. Access to the engine room etc is easy for the slightly more adventurous. A great dive. We managed to fit four dives into the first day. Incidentally a real treat after dives on this boat is a warm fluffy towel and shoulder massage from the dive guide after each dive! UK Skippers take note :

For our second day's diving we moved to the area around the Sisters rocks. The diving in this area is a little offshore, visibility is improved and there are abundant fan and Whip corals as well as prolific life. We managed two dives in the area before a squall forced us to run for cover in Englishman's bay where we did a further 3 dives, including a great night dive on Pirate's reef, where we encountered our first big life of the week, a nurse shark. Lunchtime on this day saw our first mishap of the week when Malcolm tried fusing his contact lenses to his eyeballs using chilli oil. He had been picking up raw chilli's to eat & the scratched his eyes!! Very, very painful!

Day three saw us move to the St Giles area in the North of the Island and into the Atlantic side of the Island. The early morning saw us dive London Bridge, a huge rock arch. This dive lead to further encounters with pelagic life, Nurse shark, big eyed jacks, black jacks and Tarpon were all spotted. When combined with the amazing topography this proved one of the best dives of the week. A total of three dives were completed at St Giles before the boat moved to Speyside for the main action of the week. Two further dives at Angel reef and Japanese garden (night dive) were completed.

Day four and five saw us complete 10 dives at Speyside in perfect weather conditions. The sea was flat calm and allowed us to get to some sites, which are difficult or impossible to reach in rough seas. The diving in this area is truly spectacular. The reefs are in excellent condition, barrel sponges and brain corals are enormous and your chances of seeing hammerheads, reef sharks and manta rays are good. We saw reef and nurse sharks, but unfortunately the hammerheads and mantas were conspicuous by their absence. Some of the reefs in this area are subject to really fierce currents and high-octane drift dives are the norm. The service of a good guide with extensive knowledge of both reefs and currents is essential. The diving in the area is without doubt challenging but good advice and guidance puts the diving well within the ability of the reasonably experienced sports diver. The dangers of the area were highlighted to us on day five when one of our group missed a channel in a fierce current and was swept away from the group in a matter of seconds. The rest of us were tossed around by the current in a bit of a washing machine between rocks. Thankfully were able to recover our missing mate on the other side of a rock pinnacle, frightened half to death but otherwise unharmed! How we laughed when we were safely back on the boat.

Friday morning saw us completing two final dives in the Speyside area, the aquarium and Spiny Colony. These were both great dives and allowed us to see a total of four nurse sharks and a host of other pelagic life to finish the week on a high. We set our gear out to dry and relaxed in the sunshine on the three-hour trip back to Scarborough. We had completed a total of 25 dives in 6 days! Arrival in Scarborough saw us scuttle off for an afternoon on the beach before returning for a bar-b-que dinner on the boat. On leaving the boat on Saturday we transferred our bags to a day room near the airport and spent a relaxing day on the beach at pigeon point before our evening flight back to dear old blighty.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of diving in Tobago. It is certainly better than most Caribbean destinations. The Wind Dancer was a great base. The staff were excellent, the food amazing and the service second to none. It may sound twee but you really felt like you were a friend rather than a guest by the end of the week. The boat is very comfortable and the inside is maintained to a very high standard and spotlessly clean. The cabins are all air conditioned and have en-suite facilities. On the outside the boat will benefit from it's planned maintenance period in the autumn. Wind Dancer is 'all inclusive' so all drinks etc are included in your package price. The only things I would change would be to do the morning dive before rather than after the cooked breakfast and to do the night dive before rather than after dinner. I realise this could put additional pressure on the crew, but it would extend surface intervals and add safety to a very intensive dive programme.

I would have no hesitation recommending Tobago and wind dancer to anyone and I hope to return in the future though I must say Peter Hughes' boats in Galapagos, Belize, PNG and Indonesia are looking very tempting indeed.

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