Diving in Cayman Brac was my first real dive trip experience and truly sparked my love of diving. Before this, I’d only ever dive once or twice a year and I’d never gone on a “dive trip”. Mu fortunes were able to change.
My good friend, Ellen Thuss was organizing a trip for some friends. The group included both divers and non-divers and it overlapped perfectly with turning 50. My wife is a non-diver so I decided this could work for us and I was not disappointed.
A Diving Transformation
I can’t say enough good things about Reef Divers, but here are a few:
- The staff were amazing and looked after every need.
- The pool and cabana area was perfect for non-divers.
- We purchase half-board so breakfast and dinner. The food was very good and plentiful.
- The dive guides is a great job taking us to excellent locations.
- We saw tons of sea life, turtles, moray eels and nurse sharks.
- The entire trip was reasonably priced and flights were very reasonable.
This trip also offered my an opportunity to reevaluate my diving education and I decided to do some additional PADI courses including:
The more I learned the more confidence I gained in the water. On each subsequent dive, I put the skills I was learning into practice. If I could only recommend one course, I would recommend the buoyancy course. It’s critical to both you and the environment. It not only helps us raises our comfort level, but it helps us reduce our air consumption and protects the underwater world.
Diving MV Captain Keith Tibbetts
Diving the MV Captain Keith Tibbetts was definitely the highlight of the trip. This ship was a Russian military frigate that was given to the Cuban Navy. In the mid-1990s, it was sold to the Cayman Islands for the express purpose of sinking and creating a a artificial reef. It was renamed the MV Captain Keith Tibbetts in honor of a local dive operator. The wreck sits in 80 ft of water so it’s easily within recreational dive limits. In 2004 Hurricane Ivan hit the island and broken the ship into two halves making it even more accessible to divers. This is one of two Russian ships divable in the western hemisphere. Due to the fact that the ship is made from aluminum the amount of growth is much less than a similar ship made of steel.
If you’d like to learn more about the sinking of MV Captain Keith Tibbetts, Here is a short youtube video called, Destroyer at Peace, which talks about the project behind the sinking of the ship and the creation of this new artificial reef.
D&W
