Cozumel: an East-side dive adventure
Reef Fish (Large Nassau Grouper)
are bad, we can dive the Maracaibo or the Barracuda as backup sites,"
because that was exactly what the dive operator said. But that title
is a bit too long, though it better conveys the idea that this is NOT an
ordinary trip report about Cozumel diving. :-)
This is a procrastinator's writeup (while I am offgassing :-0 between
dives in a three-week-plus stay in Cozumel now) of a two-tank trip I did
in March. It began when I read a posting in rec.scuba by Amy Peters,
amlp...@VIOLIN.AIX.CALPOLY.EDU, who wrote, among other things,
> I just spent 2 months in Playa del Carmen and Cozumel this fall : ... :
> By far my favorite was Felipe Quinones. He doesn't own a dive shop but
> instead gets most of his business through referals. : ... : Felipes
> number from the US is 011 52 (987) 2-18-17 (also a fax). He speaks
> perfect english!!!! You would never guess he is Mexican. He also took us
> to the other side of the island where I didn't see another dive group.
By then I had already dived every named reef on the West side of Czm,
with MANY repeats (Santa Rosa Wall 43 times, e.g. :), but I had never
dived on the East side of the Island and I had never heard of Felipe
Quinones before, so Amy's recommendation was too tempting to pass up
especially because (a) a few recent scuba magazine articles mentioned El
Islote, a "divable" site past the Maracaibo and the Lighthouse around
the southern tip of Czm, and (b) I had three ready-victims (oops, I mean
dive buddies) to arrange for a private boat and plan something different
for our dive-rendezvous there in mid-March.
BTW, the "victims" and SOBs (Same Ocean Buddies) in question were: 1. Sue,
my wife and dive-buddy :), 2. Pat Miller, a regular subscriber/contributor
to rec.scuba and SCUBA-SE, and 3. Jeff Kell who owns SCUBA-SE and also
frequents rec.scuba and SCUBA-L (especially MIS-posting private e-mail in
the latter, during his "cyberspace nite dives" ;-) .
So, I first asked Amy some questions via e-mail, and failing to get some
key answers, I FAXed Felipe, and was surprised to get an immediate VOICE
reply by his wife Victoria. I explained to her that I am very familiar
with Cozumel diving, and that we were NOT interested in any dare-devil or
even difficult dives, but some sites off the beaten path, including the
possibility of a dive at El Islote. After a few more minutes of
conversation with her, I was hooked. I paid a one-day deposit for the
four of us and booked our FIRST dive with Felipe on the FOURTH day of Jeff
and Pat's trip so they can get re-acclimated to Cozumel diving before we
do anything that may be consider "exotic". We would decide the exact
sites and how often we dive with them after we get there, aka "play it by
ear", Jeff and Sue's favorite dive plans. :-)
On Jeff and Pat's first dive-day, we dove Punta Sur on a private charter,
more or less to get the most bang for the buck, because it cost us less
per head (pun intended) than it would have cost to dive on a regular Aqua
Safari or Dive Paradise "cattleboat". We did it again on day 3. So,
Punta Sur was too much of a repeat to consider for Felipe's trip. Besides,
we could do it later in the week for less than Felipe's cost, which BTW
was ALSO no more than the cost of diving "cattleboats".
On day two, "play it by ear" was literally true. Pat and Sue's ears
(temporary sinus conditions) put their max depths at 0 fsw and 100 fsw
respectively; while Jeff and I did our quick "dips" to 1xx fsw and 1yy
fsw (where 50 < xx < yy < 99) on the otherwise mundane site of Palancar
Gardens. So, a deep dive such as the Maracaibo seems both inadvisable
and unnecessary for our trip on Day 4. Since Felipe didn't have any
suggestion for a site for us other than the Maracaibo or the Barracuda,
the latter of which I rejected for fear of losing ALL my buddies <g>, we
thus narrowed our choice of sites more or less by elimination, to El
Islote and the seldom-dived East side.
This is the NORMAL logistics for such a dive: Felipe would dive one day
with the divers on the West side to check them out first for buoyancy and
air consumption, on some non-beginner site such as Punta Sur. Then,
because there is no pier or calm beach on the East side to get on the
dive boat, our dive gears would be loaded onto the boat the night before.
Finally, the "go or no go" decision cannot be made until Felipe goes out
at 6 am of the dive-day to look over the weather and sea conditions on
the East side. That's when the quote, "If ... conditions are bad, we
can dive the Maracaibo or the Barracuda as backup sites" was made. :-)
If all's well, Victoria would pick us up at the hotel at 8 am, drive
over to Playa Bonita Restaurant (at Punta Chiqueros) to board the boat
from the beach, and go from there.
Because of the uncertainty of sea conditions and we were already into day
4 of our 6 dive-days, it wasn't difficult to persuade Victoria to forego
the check-out dives for us, especially because few divers in Cozumel ever
dive Punta Sur on two of first three days as we did. However, it wasn't
as easy to persuade Murphy (the fella who makes Laws) to stay away. We
were informed by Victoria the night before our trip that their boat had
an engine problem that could not be repaired in time for our dive. She
did offer us the option for a refund or a substitute site, but I decided
to take our chances on the postponement.
On the day of our dive adventure, we were picked up by Felipe in a taxi
at 7 am (a compromise between Felipe's suggested 6 am and Victoria's
previous suggestion of 8 am) and rode across the island and south to
Playa Bonita to await the arrival of the dive boat. Getting on the
boat was itself an interesting experience -- now we knew why our gear
bags had to be loaded the night before. It was a delicate balance
between the boat trying to get close enough to shore and not capsize or
get grounded, and we trying to wade out far enough to climb in the boat
and not get knocked down and washed away by the pounding 5-foot surfs.
I was actually somewhat surprised that we negotiated this part of the
operation successfully. :-) The sea looked calm enough compared to the
breakers, but it was 5-6 ft. swells nevertheless -- but that part was
old hat to Redneck-Riviera and Coastal-Carolina divers like Jeff and
Pat, and our two-tank trip was ON!
The Plan. We would do the first dive right off Playa Bonita -- go a few
hundred yards offshore, descend to 90 ft. and dive the sloping wall of
mostly plate corals. The current is generally not swift, but there is an
invisible barrier formed by currents separating Playa Bonita from the
North that it is difficult even for dive boats to get through. Said
current would take one out to sea and possibly a free trip to Cuba, but we
didn't expect to get that close to it (the express current). If we all
survive the first dive, then we would do El Islote next, and return to the
calm side afterwards by rounding the Maracaibo corner.
The Dives. It was understood that we needed no hand-holding and we could
take care of ourselves and play follow-the-leader. Felipe remember that
part well but forgot the 90 ft. plan and perhaps even the fact that he was
the DM ;-), plunged straight down to 140 fsw with his speargun looking for
crustaceans. We followed the general plan in a mild drift -- stayed in
sight (the visibility was between 100 and 250 feet horizontally, depending
on the needed clarity of one's visual target) of Felipe and kept an eye on
our computers, air gauges, and SOBs. The SECOND most memorable experience
of this dive was that we were echo-located by some dolphins who swam down
to check us out. The MOST memorable and AMAZING aspect of the entire dive
was that I did not see even ONE fish or any other reef critters. To this
day, that remained a mystery. This dive was a "success" in the sense that
we all returned to the boat unharmed. :-) I logged 128 fsw max and 35
minutes BT. I THINK my max was shallower than those of the other SOBs --
if so, THAT was probably a "first" also. :-)
The dive at El Islote was more eventful. We not only saw some fish, but
the dolphins swam down to look at us again and Pat even got close enough
to capture something in the distance, on film, that when shown to me,
looked like it could have been a dolphin, a whale shark, or a small
submarine. :-) Islote Reef is described in an article in Rodale's mag
as "strips that run perpendicular to shore (unlike the west side's
parallel barrier reefs). They support pristine coral an sponge growth
that wouldn't know a dive boat from a whale shark ... ". Fair enough.
Maybe Pat did film a whale shark :-) It was indeed an easy dive.
Hardly any current was present and I (computer) logged 75 fsw max. and
47 minutes BT. It was just a DIFFERENT dive for Cozumel. A boat ride
back around the lighthouse to the west side placed us on familiar waters
and a long ride back to town.
To the more adventurous divers in Cozumel, diving the East side now seems
to be as fashionable an adventure as diving the Barracuda was a few years
ago. The Barracuda is a more difficult dive, but divable almost everyday.
There're a few more "divable" sites on the East side, notably Xhanan around
the northern (Barracuda) tip of the island. The east side dives are
easier dives on "good" days of which there aren't many. Besides Felipe,
there's Charro (whom Carl Heinzl likes), and a few other one-man-band
operators who specialize in chartering these more "exotic" dives. What
it's like when the sea and current conditions are bad? I don't know and
don't intend to find out. Suffice to point out that divers had been known
to "disappear" from the east side and never seen again. This report is
NEITHER a recommendation FOR nor AGAINST booking such a dive, but a first-
hand impression of what it was like and what preparations are necessary
(logistical, physical, and mental) for such dives. If you are enticed to
try such an adventure yourself, just make sure that you KNOW YOUR LIMITS ...
SAFE and FUN diving to all,
-- Bob. RF...@clemson.edu