Best of Mike #47

Dive boats come in all shapes and sizes.

Live-a-boards are often built expressly for diving. They are in the neighborhood of 100+ feet and are capable of accommodating a crew of 5 or 6, plus 20-24 guests. All of whom live onboard that vessel for a week or more.

At the other end of the spectrum, boats are adapted to (vs built for) diving.

The smallest, particularly popular in Cozumel, would be open boats that hold just 6 divers. They are very fast and are always the 1st to arrive at the dive site.

The one pictured here is a day boat. It probably holds 12-16 divers and a crew of 3.

In Cozumel the boats tend to be in the small and medium categories, because it is drift diving.

That means that once the divers are in the water, they ride the current (which in Cozumel is always significant) for their dive. While the boat follows the bubbles of their group of divers.

At dive's end, we just surface and climb back on the boat, without having to ever swim against those stiff currents.

Most of our trips to Cozumel have been with groups from the dive shop. I kind of like boats of this size for those trips as we can all be together on the rides to and from the dive sites. That can be almost as much fun as the dives themselves.

One of my favorite Cozumel sites is Palancar Caves. It is a nice enough dive but what makes it the most fun for me is what we do on the boat before we get there.

Some time ago I made up a whole story, that I like to tell on the ride out, about Mayan ghosts who haunt that site.

Lots of fun to see a boat full of divers, kids and adults, with face paints, making their dive buddy safe against the evil spirits.

In fact, every time we have done it, there have been people on the boat who were not part of our group. We have invited them to get in on the fun ..... no one has ever said no, including the local dive masters.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pixtures of the "painted faces". But I know there are people reading this blog who have been there and who do.

Perhaps one of them will post a comment and pixture from one of those trips.