Having just got back from a week’s diving in the Egyptian Red Sea, I was reminded that going on a group diving trip is such a great thing to do. There are many different diving holidays out there but doing the group thing has so many benefits.
Anyone that has read the PADI Open Water manual will remember the slightly ambiguous term “Meet people, go places, do things.” This is used to sum up why learning to dive and continuing your education is beneficial to you. It’s maybe not until you get your qualification and do some diving that you realise just how true this actually is. If you dive, you will meet new people that you have something in common with. You will want to go to new places (maybe with the people you have met) and when you’re there, you will experience different underwater adventures. Basically, you will be enriching your life.
Take the Red Sea for example, it is different in the north and the south. From the shore entry diving in Dahab, the amazing wrecks and reefs of Ras Mohammad and Abu Nahas, the current fuelled pinnacles of Brothers and Daedalus, the pristine gentle reefs of Marsa Alam and down to the crazy reef systems of St. Johns and Fury Shoals. All amazing, all special and all accessible by liveaboard.
A group liveaboard trip has it all – over the course of a week, relationships are forged as friendships build. I’ve heard people say that they cannot wait to see their ‘dive family’ again. This is special. The things you do together are not the normal day to day things – rolling off boats, diving in WW11 wrecks, looking at a reef by torchlight at night. All these and more add to the overall experience of the week.
It is adventurous and it is fun – diving is a challenge because of course there are inherent risks, you are breathing underwater at the end of the day. But with good training and safe diving practices, the risks are virtually eliminated. There are always going to be experienced members in a group which means knowledge and experience are shared naturally and without question. This means that whatever your level, you will have a great time. Dive all day, talk about it all night.
Your skills and confidence grow – the learning curve is steep but enjoyable. A new diver can join a group trip and within a couple of days be settled and totally in the groove. You will have dived in wrecks, in currents, at night, with dolphins, with sharks, seen turtles, seen healthy corals, gone in caverns, had drift dives and more. All of this slowly builds your confidence and gives you an awareness of your abilities and limitations. You’re actually doing what you’ve been taught and it’s great.
Back to our recent trip. We were diving on a wreck called the Kingston which is a good dive with lots of access points and a beautiful reef. As we came off the wreck to go down the reef, a current appeared out of nowhere and turned a gentle dive into quite a quick drift dive. At first a few people were a bit wide eyed as they had not experienced this before but within a couple of minutes, they were loving it and doing superman impressions. Flying along with their arms out. To top it off, it stopped in time for us to watch a Turtle feeding on the coral.
So essentially, a group liveaboard trip to the Red Sea is fun, educational, adventurous, builds your confidence and enriches your soul. Your day goes like this; wake up – coffee – dive – breakfast – chill – dive – lunch – chill – dive – snacks/chill – night dive – chill – bed.
And the best thing about it is that you get to do it all again tomorrow.