From: par@teak18.cray.com (Peter Rigsbee)
Subject: Cayman Aggressor trip
Originator: par@teak18
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
Date: 10 Apr 92 12:42:38 CDT


This is a trip report of a recent cruise (3/28/92-4/4/92) aboard the Cayman
Aggressor.  Bottom line -- great and worth the cost!

In case you don't know, the Cayman Aggressor is a liveaboard that cruises
around Grand Cayman Island and (sometimes) Little Cayman Island.  (For legal
reasons, the Aggressor people have recently swapped boats and the boat 
currently being used is the one named the "Bay Islands Aggressor".  The change 
is not significant.)

Our cruise had 17 passengers aboard (10 of whom were a group set up by a
dive shop near Philadelphia), and 5 crew.  Dive skills ranged from my brother
(doing his open water checkouts on board) and myself (starting the trip with
two logged dives) to two instructors from the dive shop.  This range of
experience was never an issue, from either direction.

As a beginning diver, I found being on a liveaboard to be a super way to 
improve my diving.  With the opportunity to take up to 5 dives a day (more if
you can handle it), you can take the time to try a new skill or concentrate 
on improving a skill without feeling that you are going to be "wasting" a 
dive. I also took a PADI Advanced Open Water course on-board, taking advantage
of the opportunity to do several deep and night dives.

We didn't make it to Little Cayman on our trip; the weather was too iffy.
(We had a brief rainshower one morning, but otherwise had sunny weather.
But the wind direction changed significantly from day to day.)  Instead we hit 
various sites around Grand Cayman - west, north, and south.  The island is 
small enough that the captain can choose the side and sites that best fit that 
day's wind and current.  Generally, we'd move to a site at 7 AM, dive it 
twice, move to another site at 12:30, dive it twice, and then either move to 
a third site at 5:30 or dive the afternoon site at night.  Most people on
our cruise dove four times a day.

For those of you familiar with the area, we dove the following locations:
		  AM			  PM			  night
  Sunday:	Angelfish Reef (W)	Oro Verde (W)		Oro Verde
  Monday:	Cathedrals (N)		Babylon	(N)		Babylon
  Tuesday:	Rum Point (N)		Doc Fulsome (W)		Doc Fulsome
  Wednesday:	Stingray City (N)	Sensation Wall (N)	Balboa (W)
  Thursday:	Eagle Ray Rocks (W)   Maria's Amazing Mazes (S) Balboa
  Friday:	Round Rock (W)

(W) = west side of Gr. Cayman, (N) = north, (S) = south.  The Oro Verde, Doc 
Fulsome, and Balboa are all wreck dives.  The request to dive the Balboa
twice came from the passengers.

I personally found feeding the stingrays at Stingray City to be rather boring 
after the first few minutes, but its something you can *wow* your non-diving 
friends with.  I found most of the other dive sites to be pretty fantastic,
with a good deal of variety from site to site.

Except for Stingray City, it was rare to see other divers at the same site.  
(And at Stingray City, we were the first to arrive -- an advantage of the
liveaboard!)  In one case, a night dive, another boat showed up, and it was 
nice to have the luxury to just wait until they had left before we went into 
the water.

The rooms on board were small but acceptable, and food was good and plentiful.
The crew was very friendly and helpful.  They trust you to know what you are
doing, but are available to help, answer questions, or dive with you as you
need it.  At the same time, they are very safety conscious and weren't shy
about pulling people aside to comment on problems they'd noticed (swimming 
away from a dive buddy or pushing time limits).

I'd really encourage anyone taking this cruise, at least, to have a dive
computer.  Much of the diving was on the wall, and it is real easy to go deep
without realizing it.  One couple who didn't have computers and hadn't used
tables since being certified were grounded for 24 hours by the captain after
going too deep on the first dive of the trip.

As several people had warned me, one problem with the Aggressors is that you
get spoiled; the prospect of doing tropical diving the "regular" way just 
isn't as appealing anymore.

	- Peter Rigsbee
	  par@cray.com

P.S. If you like diving the West Wall off Grand Cayman, or want to, you may
want to hurry up.  One of the Aggressor crew members mentioned that it is
likely that they will be building a big cruise ship berthing facility off
the north part of the Seven Mile Beach, wiping out reef and a number of 
dive sites (he mentioned Bonnie's Arch and Orange Canyon as two).  Lots of
cruise ships visit Grand Cayman each week, and they currently anchor off
of Georgetown Harbor and boat people into Georgetown.  They want some 
permanent berths to tie up to, the bankers and residents don't want to 
have to deal with thousands of visitors clogging up *their* town each day
(now the cruise passengers will just clog up the tourist area), and the 
politicians like the prospect of a multi-million dollar public works 
program.  Who could be against something like that?  ;-(
From: davew@hp-ptp.ptp.hp.com (Dave Waller)
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 17:09:08 GMT
Subject: Re: Tanks and GA aircraft
Organization: HP Pacific Technology Park - Sunnyvale, Ca.