Instant Reader Report
on Cane Bay Divers / Cane Bay Reef Club in
Virgin Islands / St. Croix on
2002/06
by
James McMeisn , WA, USA
Report Number 020820143825889

 [Unspecified] 

Dive Conditions

3 minute safety stop  

Due to the size of the dive boat -10', uses a cooler for storage of camera
gear but since boat is limited to 4 divers, not a problem.  

Overall Rating

Cane Bay Reef Club is a quaint small facility with a medium sized swimming
pool. A/C in most of the rooms and rooms are large with cable TV's,
refrigerator and full cooking facilities. On our arrival the owner took us
to a local supermarket and we stocked up on food for the week as well as
drinks. Restaurant on site serves good food and has several special
nights, one is lobster night for under $20 and one night is Mexican night
where you have a buffet that all you can eat for under $8. Cane Bay dive
shops is about a 15min walk from the hotel. Dive boat is a 10' inflatable,
max 4 divers, diveguide & boat captian. Entry is accomplished by
unzipping the deck in the bow, sitting with legs through the hole, they
put your bc on and then you do a forward roll under the boat. Looks
strange but it works great. Since most of the dive sites are within
10-15mins you don't spend to much time on it. Of course you go back in
between dives to get fresh tanks. 3 boat dives a day plus they have shore
diving ($5 a tank) and it is about a 300 yard swim out to the reef but
well worth it. One complaint, on one dive we initially planned to drift
and diveguide was going to drag a float along, after arrival at the site,
diveguide checked the water said there was a current going in the
direction of the dive so had the boat go to next mooring to await us
instead of following us plus he didn't take the float. Of course half way
through the dive a strong current came up in the opposite direction! Two
divers got very low on air and by the time my wife and I were getting low
the diveguide was so far ahead we couldn't get his attention. We gathered
up on of the other divers how was down to 300 and did our safety stop and
then went to surface, of course the boat was several hundered yards from
us. Later I asked the diveguide why he hadn't stopped the dive after
runing into the current and the fact that he'd actually started swimming
faster agains the current. His response "I wanted to get to where the
boat was anchored becuase I knew you would be getting low on air, so I
figured if we went faster, we'd get there quicker!" Other then that
the diving was very good here and corals are very healthy with lots of
small critters. On our last dive before leaving, my wife and I were diving
in 60' of water when a 4.0 earthquake hit on St. Thomas across the water
from us. An unusal experiance. 

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