First Liveaboard? Don’t forget these three things
Getting ready for your first liveaboard? Yay! Get ready for your most incredible dive trip yet! And don’t forget to pack these three necessities….
Supplies for your ears
On most LOAs you’ll be doing 4-5 dives a day. If you’ve never done this before then it will be a shock for your ears. Even if you’ve never had ear problems before you’re likely to start feeling something after a few days. If you don’t do something about it then your ears will keep getting worse and you’ll end up missing out on diving. Take some time to set up an ear plan before you leave and bring everything with.
The first thing you’ll want is some supplies to keep your ears clean. We usually bring a waterbottle that we keep on the dive deck full of freshwater so that we can rinse out our ears after every dive. We also bring our own homemade “ear beer” that we use each night.
Our current recipe is 50% alcohol, 30% water, 20% white vinegar, <1% glycerine. It’s easier than it seems. We buy a little bottle of swimmers’ ear drops that are alcohol with a bit of glycerine. We pour half out, add in a little white vinegar and then top it off with tap water. The vinegar kills the bad stuff, the alcohol dries up any remaining liquid in your ears and the glycerine prevents the skin from drying out too much. The water makes it a little gentler for sensitive ears. Plenty of people replace that with vinegar or water with no issues.
We also pack a stack of medications just in case our ears start to feel a bit uncertain.Mixing medication with diving has risks but we’ve never had trouble when we’re doing it to protect our ears. We use ibuprofen, claritin and sudafed. We don’t take anything until we feel our ears and then we start taking a cocktail of all 3 and continue until any pain in the ears goes away, which is usually ~2-3 days. The ibuprofen is ~3x/day and we get 24hour claritin and sudafed for each morning. Why the extreme cocktail? It’s because pain in your ears can come from slightly different places. Usually it’s the result of some sort of swelling and then it snowballs into more swelling. All three of these medications either reduce the root causes and/or the swelling itself. They have slightly different mechanisms so we take them all to make sure we’re targeting the problem from every possible angle.
Is this overkill? Sure. But if you’re on a one-week LOA in your dream destination and you won’t get to dive again for 6-12 months do you want to risk your vacation? We
(Lots of) bathing suits
You’re going diving so of course you’re packing bathingsuits. But most LOA newbies underestimate how many they need. Some folks show up with only two thinking that you can alternate days. We would recommend 4 at a minimum and 6 to be safe. Why so many? Because most of your meals will be eaten indoors with AC on. Occasionally that will even be on cushioned seats where a dry bottom half is required. It can be a pain to have to change into regular clothes and then back into a damp bathing suit 2+ times per day. And if it rains or is dewey overnight you also might not be able to reliably dry them each day. So we bring 6 and that lets us start off with a dry one each morning and change once or twice a day as needed. They’re small and light – you won’t regret having one extra!
Cash and a credit card
Nearly everyone is surprised by the bill at the end of their first liveaboard. You already paid a lot of money for the boat in the first place. How could you possibly still owe hundreds or, especially if you’re a couple, thousands?! There are quite a few extras that are easy to miss while first signing up but can then add up quickly. Common ones are:
- Port fees – anywhere from $50 to $250. It’s rarely clear what this is for but some of the reasons we’ve heard include special port taxes per visitor and the dockage fee for the boat.
- Marine park fees – from $20 to $250. if you’ll be visiting a protected marine park there is often a per-person fee. This fee helps pay for local monitoring to prevent fishing in the park and sometimes stipends to local fishermen in return for promises not to fish in the park or not to use destructive fishing techniques and practices such as dynamite fishing and over-fishing.
- Fuel surcharge – $50 to $200. It’s never clear why this isn’t included in the price in the first place, but sometimes it isn’t.
- Hotel tax – $100-$250. Some destinations require LOAs to charge hotel tax and it is done separately from the original booking.
- Gear rental – renting a full set of equipment can cost up to $300 for a week-long trip. Even just one item, such as a computer if yours runs out of battery or a backup flashlight if the boat requires that each diver carry two on a night dive, can easily be >$50 for the week per person.
- Nitrox – can cost up to $150 per person per week and even more on trips that last >7 days.
- Courses – even if you’re not planning to take a course, sometimes it happens. For example, if you’re doing in Turks & Caicos then you need to use Nitrox to avoid skipping dives. Or if you’re in Belize and want to dive the Blue Hole and aren’t Advanced… then some dive operators will require the course. There is a big range here, but if you get roped into a course it can be $150 to $500.
- Drinks & snacks – some LOAs will charge. This is more common budget LOAs where softdrinks and even small packs of chips sometimes carry on cost. When you get into mid-range LOAs it’s usually all included.
- Souvenirs – most mid- and high-end LOAs will bring out a collection of branded shirts, hats, etc at some point during the trip. This is optional but usually about half the boat goes in for something to remember the trip.
Every LOA we’ve been on has included at least 2 of the generic fees. They usually come up on the last afternoon when everyone is asked to go to the bridge to settle up one by one. The lowest we’ve seen was an LOA in Thailand that was at the high end of the backpacker range where a fuel surcharge and marine park fee came to about ~$150 US per person. More often we see something in the range of $400 – $500 per person. And occasionally, especially when there is a course involved, it has topped $750 per person. Add onto that the typical request for crew tips which is usually suggested to be 10-20% of the total trip cost, and you can expect that final captain’s bill to be $600 – $1,200 per person.
We always budget for this last-day bill when we’re planning the trip. Our most common approach when budgeting for a trip is to take the posted cost of the LOA and add an extra 35%. That typically covers this last-day bill as well as small incidentals between the airport and the boat.
We suggest bringing cash for a few reasons. First, sometimes credit cards have a fee that can be >5% for international charges. Second, crew tips in cash are easier to distribute and often result in more money for the crew. They work hard – help them out here. Third, if you want to tip on your credit card you will need to tell the purser how much of a tip you want them to add. Sometimes this happens in a slightly public place where other guests or the crew will overheard. If this makes you uncomfortable then having cash gives you the option to put the money in an envelope that you can hand over quietly.
Please note – we are not advocating for undertipping the crew and using cash as a way to not embarrass yourself. Don’t undertip the crew. They work hard and pay is usually low.
Now go have a great time!
We know that was a lot of information and possibly a bit of a buzzkill for someone planning their first LOA. Don’t worry! Your trip will be incredible and now that you’ve read this we hope it will be even more incredible because you’ll avoid some of the typical unpleasant surprises that first-time liveaboarders run into. Your liveaboard is going to be great!