This post isn’t about the dives, that’s in four other posts (one per day). Instead, I want to muse about the liveaboard experience itself.
I’ll from the top: booking. I was already to be in Thailand from the 4th – 18th, and finishing a group trip in Khao Lak, where all the liveaboards leave from, so the plan was to ditch out during the third segment of the group trip and go dive. I looked at several boats, at liveaboard.com, and at padi.com. Because I was primarily focused on something that fit between my arrival into Khao Lak on the 13th and not extend my vacation very far, I landed on a four day, thirteen dive northern Similan trip on the MV Bavaria, from the 15th-18th, meaning I just extended my trip by one day for the flight buffer.
The boat actually runs a week, and its possible to leave or join midway, so we travelled out to the liveaboard on a speedboat since we were just in the back half of the trip. Eighty minutes later, our gear was on deck, we were getting a briefing from the diving lead, and we were just about twenty minutes from our first dive.
Getting Ready to Dive
Equipment prep is one of the most stark differences between this liveaboard and charter diving. I’m used to “setup your gear, dive, swap your gear to a new tank in the surface interval, dive again.” In this case, once I setup my gear, I never changed it. Between dives, we just removed our regulators and they filled the tanks in place. It made each dive just that much more enjoyable.
From dive briefing to getting on the dinghy was maybe five minutes. More if I was in a wetsuit. The boat was organized into four dive groups, and we were spaced every other tank on one side of the deck or the other, and deployed in two stages, so while it was a bit congested, it was spaced out reasonably well.
The dive locations seemed pretty flexible; weather, goals, visibility. What was originally planned could change to get the best out of the dives. A couple of our dives, they chose to forego quality for a chance to see a whale shark or other large fish (which was unsuccessful). Richelieu Rock, we left early because viz was bad and currents were high. I appreciate the flexibility, and I recognize that the dive masters want to see this stuff, too!
Boredom and Buddies
I was afraid that, being stuck on a boat for four days would lead to boredom, or a crazy rush. It was neither. Food, an hour or two of downtime, then another dive. About half the boat was spending the downtime going through fish books, writing in their logs, doing a debrief with their DM, some were taking a nap, some were reading or sunning on the top deck. But honestly, that time just flew by. I felt neither rushed, nor bored, but just dove from sunup to sundown, and each day felt complete when it was over.
A few of the people on the boat were doing their Nitrox course material. Everyone dove nitrox, and those that weren’t certified, did it on the boat. It was necessary, even if they didn’t say so. The bulk of the dives were at 20-30m, and on at least one of them, I was pushing NDL. Diving on air would not have been possible, or at least, I would have been the one pulling us up out of the water early for reasons other than an empty tank.
The boat was filled with people from all over: Poland, Germany, France, Australia, Finland, the UK… 12 countries across 20 travelers. Several were couples, Josh and I friends, several were solo travelers. English was the common language used, even though it was a German boat with German and Thai dive pros. The one thing that was common is that we were all divers, and that made for pretty compatible personalities.