SCUBA Yacht Charters in the Caribbean
Scuba Yacht Charters are a popular activity on our vacations.
If you are looking for a scuba diving vacation package with a mix of certified divers and non-divers in your group, then this is probably the right choice for you.
These boats usually do a mixture of non-diving charters but can do dedicated diving charters.
SCUBA yachts have air compressors onboard, tanks, rental gear and have an instructor on board.
These crewed charter yachts will steer your charter vacation around getting in some excellent diving. The norm on these boats is two dives per day with one or 2-night dives offered. With three dives per day, you are still going to be mostly diving, eating, or sleeping with some time for other activities.
If you plan on one dive per day plus a couple of night dives, you will have a much more relaxed vacation.
How SCUBA Yacht Charters work
During a SCUBA yacht charter, the usual routine is to have breakfast and then head to a dive site for a dive. Following the dive, the yacht would typically relocate to a more comfortable spot for an early lunch.
It’s off for another dive after lunch. After this dive, it’s off to a pretty anchorage for afternoon snorkeling, beach time, or maybe some wakeboarding. The anchorage may be at a site for an evening night dive.
Usually, the boats stay overnight at the night dive site or dive the next morning. If you are certified, many operators are ok with you jumping in for a non guided, pre-breakfast dive as well.
Advantages to this type of charter
These diving yacht charters will often dive the less traveled path, giving you better dive sites than the local dive store can. Your yacht with a week to play with, they can work their way to more remote locations. The time/ distance factor more often restricts the dive stores.
This type of vacation can be tailored on the fly to suit the group. If you are hungover in the morning, then perhaps you would instead do two dives in the afternoon.
Because a SCUBA yacht charter vacation is usually on smaller boats than the dive liveaboard’s, your party is the only guest. YOU drive the day’s agenda.
Snorkelers are happy with many of the dive sites. Or, non-divers can take a resort course and see the site themselves.
These are a short education session, after which you are set up with dive gear and get to go diving. There are restrictions on depth, etc., but its the perfect way to experience scuba diving.
Often guests will go home after a resort course and get their scuba certification for next time.
Many Dive Masters are trained to offer a Resort Course as well as Dive Instructors.
Educational SCUBA Courses
These boats can also usually offer dive education courses. Most captains would prefer that you do the school work online before you come, then when you get to the boat, you do in water education.
PADI, NAUI, SSI are all certification programs that yacht charters offer.
Even better is an “open water” referral. Go to your local dive shop and do the school part as well as the pool part of the course, then your instructor signs off on what you have achieved. When you get to your vacation, you only have four dives to do before you have an open water certification.
Doing a full certification program aboard your yacht is hard to dob as the rest of your party is off water skiing or slurping a rum punch.
If there are already divers in your party, then they may have to miss out on some of the instructor’s time for him/her to do class or pool work.
The four water dives, though, can be combined with scuba dives that the rest are already doing, with just a small portion of the instructor’s time. SCUBA Yacht Charters can be anywhere from a two passenger-only boat up to a yacht that takes 20!
What is Rendezvous Diving?
Rendezvous diving is when a local dive company meets your yacht at anchor and picks you up for your dives and then brings you back.
Allowing everyone else to do other activities (or not!) instead of sitting on a possibly wavy dive site.
Our SCUBA History
A SCUBA Yacht Charter is the type of vessel we ran for nearly 20 years in the British Virgin Islands and Caribbean. We know the requirements better than any other charter broker out there.
We ran many specialized trips, including underwater photography courses led by well known National Geographic photographers as well as research trips for marine biologists and university-based trips.
Let us tailor a charter for your group based around anything to do with diving.
The British Virgin Islands offers a WRECK Week in December. That is a great time to schedule a trip with the extra activities available. Check out the details on wreck week here.
Check out our newest blog post on personal SCUBA diving charters (opens in a new browser)
Check out a few of our favorite SCUBA diving Yachts in the Caribbean and contact Kerry (SCUBA Instructor) with H2O Luxury Yachts and let’s get you booked.
Scuba Diving On Board