PG Dive Questions

[jwas1]

I am PADI advanced open water certified and have signed up for several dives on our trip in March. Are the divemasters PG crew or do they contract with local dive operators for these dives? Since this is a cruise, I suspect the dives are relatively tame as far as depth and topography are concerned. Any details from those who have dived with PG in the past?

[cwc]

Yes, all divemaster are PG crews. They are the marina staff. They don't normally contract out dives unless more people sign up than their two zodia can handle.

 

Tame... I don't know because I was with the certification class, so all the divers with me were students = novice. But there were many advance divers on our cruise, one of them's wife was in our class. The advance people hang out (dive) together and we never see them (underwater) until we were back on the ship.

 

If you are doing the 10days cruise, I think you will have the best dive.(some drift current thing).

 

Once you dive with PG, you will never think to dive any other way:D.

[catmommy]

Hi All,

 

DH is trying to decide if he wants to bring his own snorkle equiptment on our May 19th PG cruise.

 

He has a prescription snorkle mask but was wondering if the PG has dry snorkles or not.

 

Also if his ENT clears it he is thinking of taking scuba classes now before we leave. He thinks that doing the classes onboard might take too much time and keep him from doing other fun stuff. Also since he has some ear problems he wants to make sure that he doesn't have any discomfort even if the ENT clears him.

 

For those who have taken the classes onboard do you recall how much they cost? Costs here are in the $200 range for certification.

 

Thanks bunches!

Caroline

[JanR]

jwas,

 

Most of the dives are led by the PG dive team. All of whom are fantastic.

 

I believe that there are a couple dives which are done with outside vendors (I believe that the night dive is done this way, but could be mistaken).

 

We got our certification on the PG on a B2B in 2005 and have since continued to dive (AOW with several specialties since).

 

The diving in Tahiti is easily the tamest that we've had. No real current, no surge, 100-150+foot visibility and no real deep dives.

 

Our dives in Moorea were the deepest at "Ledges" and "Shark Gallery" at just about 60 feet. You could have followed the ridge deeper, but no real reason to do so...so much to see 40-50 feet.

 

We dove "Tabletop" in Bora Bora which was only 20-30feet (sorry, my log is somewhere with my gear and I'm going by memory). "Tapu" at Bora Bora, if memory serves me right, was about 40-50 feet as well.

 

As for general description of the dives...how about "wow"? A dozen or so black-tip reef sharks sharing the water with you, eels seemingly every 50 feet, a few turtles hanging out, and fish so thick that our instructor had to keep shooing them away so that we could see his hand signals while doing our drills.

 

All of our certification dives were done seperately from the "certified" dives, so we didn't interfere or slow anyone down.

 

Caroline,

 

In 2005, the snorkles were non-dry. So, it all comes down to whether how important a dry snorkle is for you to justify the luggage space. If you were already bringing a scuba kit bag with your BCD and regs, then obviously, I'd throw the snorkle (if you use one diving) and fins in. But otherwise, I'd use the ships kit...but that's a personal choice decision.

 

Although Tracey and I certified on the PG and have absolutely wonderful things to say about the PG's dive team and the instruction that we received, if we were only doing the 7 day cruise, we'd do our certification prior to leaving.

 

Doing the certification does chew up quite a bit of your time on board. Between morning pool sessions, studying, and the evening meetings/classes, it's a committment.

 

Another possibility for you, especially if you live in an area where doing your open water dives in time is problematic, you can do your classroom and confined (pool) dives at home and finish your open water dives on the PG.

 

One word of caution, if there are not enough students, the PG will not be able to support the course. In our case, they needed a minimum of 4 students to justify deferring one of their DM/instructors from the other dives to instructing. We were lucky that there were 4 of us our first week. If we only were on board the second week, there wouldn't have been enough students.

 

If at all possible, I think I'd get my certification at home and fully enjoy diving off of the PG as a certified diver.

 

If you have any other questions, let us know. CC is a great resource for getting all the good tips to make the PG a perfect experience...remember your floating lounges for the motus:) .

 

v/r

 

Jan

[Anniversary couple]

We will be on the PG this summer and are still undecided about whether to go to Bora Bora or Moorea for our 4-day pre-cruise. Since you went diving on both islands, which one had the better diving in your opinion? Our favorite diving so far was Australia's Great Barrier Reef. I'm not sure we'll get the same level of coral formation in FP, but it sounds like the fish life is wonderful. Also, did you do the wave runner and if so, which island did you do it on?

[JanR]

Our personal opinion was that we liked the diving off of Moorea best. PG's "Shark Gallery" and "Ledges" was fantastic. The sites are just outside of Ophalha (I totally misspelled that, by the way) bay and are fairly close to each other. We felt that the variety of what we saw was much more than Bora Bora.

 

Additionally, although Bora Bora is a beautiful island, we thought that Moorea was more scenic on land. I'd do the pre-cruise in Moorea. However, either would be fantastic. You sound like you are have a pretty nice dilema to work out.

 

Coral...you're probablly right about the coral in FP. I was not blown away by the coral, but my diving has been pretty much FP, Hawaii, NC wrecks, and the local quarries, so I don't have much to compare to. It was nicer than Hawaii, but a friend of ours who dove with us the second week said that he's been to places with much better coral. The fish life, sharks, turtles, and eels were what we were amazed with. Far and beyond the best diving we've done to date.

 

As for the wave runners, yes we did the "Circle Bora Bora by Waverunner" excursion. It is a "MUST DO" and was one of the highlights of our time in FP.

 

Hope this helps,

 

v/r

 

Jan

[Kathy Z]

We don't dive but snorkel every chance we get. We did a back to back (14 days) on the PG in 2004 and the 10 day in 2005. We have prescription masks and my snorkel is a dry snorkel. Despite our equipment taking a lot of space we take it all including our fins. The snorkel tour operators admired my husband's new fins having never seen ones quite like them previously. We did use the mesh bags from the PG to carry our equipment.

 

Everyone rates the Bora Bora waverunner excursions above the Moorea waverunner excursions. My husband had surgery in 1995 fusing three of his vertebra and I tend to get motionsick so we did not ride them.

 

The bay mentioned above is Opunohu - a beautiful spot both above and below the water.

[Texed]

Kathy Z always has great info.:)

[Kathy Z]

Thanks, Ed. Nice "chatting" with you again.

[Texed]

Nice talking with you again also. :)

We are going on PG again June 30, 2007. Want to join us? :D

[Kathy Z]

We have cruise friends who will be on the June 3 PG Fiji to Tahiti cruise. That's the one I'd really like to do if we were cruising this year. But we will be on a trip to Israel in May so our beach "fixes" this year will be Sanibel, FL, next month and the Outer Banks, NC, the first week of September.

[Kathy Z]

Sorry, double post. I'll blame the Internet.