St. Thomas

[dbh]

I have been fortunate to dive in many places. Before kids, my wife & I used to head to destinations where I could dive and there were good shopping / restaurants for her. When I saw that the US Virgin Islands section of this forum was blank, it reminded how underrated the diving is in St. Thomas. We selected this destination along with another non-diving couple and from what I had researched, I was expecting mediocre at-best diving. I was pleasantly surprised after my first day of diving. I did a trip report that I would like to share for anyone that might be considering this destination. I will warn you that the links to the individual dive sites do not work anymore due to Blue Island Divers reworking their website. They now have an interactive map. Also the pictures suck. It was very early in my underwater photography venture and I was shooting with a Nikonos (film......yuck!).

St Thomas Trip Report

HTH,
Dave

[terrillja]

Originally Posted by dbh

I have been fortunate to dive in many places. Before kids, my wife & I used to head to destinations where I could dive and there were good shopping / restaurants for her. When I saw that the US Virgin Islands section of this forum was blank, it reminded how underrated the diving is in St. Thomas. We selected this destination along with another non-diving couple and from what I had researched, I was expecting mediocre at-best diving. I was pleasantly surprised after my first day of diving. I did a trip report that I would like to share for anyone that might be considering this destination. I will warn you that the links to the individual dive sites do not work anymore due to Blue Island Divers reworking their website. They now have an interactive map. Also the pictures suck. It was very early in my underwater photography venture and I was shooting with a Nikonos (film......yuck!).

St Thomas Trip Report

HTH,
Dave

It seems to be a new subforum, I had posted on st.thomas before. Wonder if the old posts will be transferred or are gone forever..

[Crimediver]

Nice pictures. I have dove St. Thomas in 1987 and found it to be nice diving. I did shore dives at Coki Beach and found the locals would try to rip-off your dive gear if they had half a chance. The young kids were the worst.
I also stayed at Frenchman's Reef and used their on premises dive shop. They ran a couple of small boats and it was a nice operation. I had nice diving the week I was there. Not sure if Frenchman's Reef still runs a dive shop.

The biggest problem for me while staying at the Frenchman's Reef was getting back and forth to Charlotte Amalie. It was paying for water taxis or rides to go back and forth each way started adding up. if I go there again I would stay closer to town.

[DivingCRNA]

Originally Posted by Crimediver

Nice pictures. I have dove St. Thomas in 1987 and found it to be nice diving. I did shore dives at Coki Beach and found the locals would try to rip-off your dive gear if they had half a chance. The young kids were the worst.
I also stayed at Frenchman's Reef and used their on premises dive shop. They ran a couple of small boats and it was a nice operation. I had nice diving the week I was there. Not sure if Frenchman's Reef still runs a dive shop.

The biggest problem for me while staying at the Frenchman's Reef was getting back and forth to Charlotte Amalie. It was paying for water taxis or rides to go back and forth each way started adding up. if I go there again I would stay closer to town.

Frenchmans Reef still has a dive shop.

Why did you run into Charlotte Amalie all the time? Weren't you closer to Red Hook?

What I found about the locals wasn't just that they wanted to rip off dive gear. They wanted to rip you off all the time and did not care about you. The mainlanders that moved out there were about the only friendly folks I met-until I went over to St. John.

The diving was pretty good there. Like anywhere, the dive ops try to stay close to the port to save fuel. It was not Cozumel clear water, but good vis and I saw a lot of cool animals.