Eddy's Scuba Blog

Here is a review of the Nekton Pilot as a scuba diving liveaboard. This was my first liveaboard and in general terms I was pleased with the Nekton Pilot. It was really a nice scuba diving platform, very convenient for someboday whose main interest is diving.

The Boat
The Nekton Pilot has a "SWATH" (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull) design, it is basically a platform sitting on top of two submerged pontoons. This design makes it very stable and smooth when cruising. Sometimes we did not even feel the boat moving. This design came from the Navy, so if you've seen the the "stealth boat" this boat is similar (sans the stealth capabilities), in my opinion. The pontoons can be filled with ballast (ocean water) to lower the boat for greater stability in rough water. The ballast can be pumped out to make the boat higher when docking. Since the center of gravity can be made lower, you get the impression that you are on a bigger ship (8 times bigger according to Nekton).

The boat has three decks: The Sun Deck, the First Deck and the Second Deck. The Sun Deck is the topmost deck and has two areas, the Bridge and a recreational area. The recreational area has an open area and covered area. The covered area is a lounge with 2 round tables (for 8+ people) and a whiteboard. This is where the morning dive briefings happen. Next to this area there is a closet for rental equipment, a shelf for dry belongings and a rack with "no-fly" hangers (tied to the rack) for hanging your wetsuits. Here are pictures of the Sun Deck and the Bridge:

The Bridge sits at front-most part of the boat. Actually you get an unobstructed view of the ocean on this bridge, which you don't in most other ships. The bridge is equipped with modern communication equipment and also sonar which is seen on the left side of the picture. I guess sonar would very useful when navigating around shallow reefs. Captain Ephey will let you get into the bridge and even "drive" the boat on a quiet night. I heard that people have done this, but I didn't myself.

Here's a picture of the ship schematics that was hanging on the lounge. The guy in the corner is either the designer of the boat or was involved somehow in the construction or design of the Pilot.

The First Deck houses the main dining area, the A/V lounge, the galley and sleeping cabins. The main dining area has an "L-shape" and can sit more than 30 people. In each corner there is audio-visual equipment including monitors or projection screens, VCR, DVD and PCs with USB connections. There is a library of PADI instruction video-tapes and also on local information. One afternoon I remember watching a tape of the history of Belize and some of the "ground" attractions.

The Audio/Visual lounge is right next to the dining area and can be visible from the dining area. It has large projection TV, a PC with USB, universal memory card adapter (CompactFlash, SD, Memory Stick, etc). and DVD burner. This where you can upload your digital pictures (using the memory card adapter. At the end of the trip there is a picture competition. Anybody that has taken pictures on the trip can participate. The results are decided by popular vote on Friday night, the last day of the cruise.

Here's also where we have our nightly lectures. Every night after dinner, usually at around 6:45pm, a member of the crew would give a lecture. The topics varies from fish id, turtle species, mostly marine biology related subjects. Here's a picture of Ryan giving a lecture on turtle species:

The lecture is a good time to relax after dinner and rest a bit before the night dives. Sometimes the night dive briefing will happen right after the lecture in this lounge.
In the A/V lounge there is a library of Fish ID/marine biology books, mostly on local species. There is also a shelf of paperbacks for the bookworms.

The Second Deck houses the rest of the cabins, crew quarters and other utility rooms. My room was on this deck, which in my opinion is better, if you prefer a quieter area. The front rooms on the second deck are preferable in my opinion.

The Rooms
The rooms are small. Even though, I was lucky to be assigned the whole room to myself (usually they eleep two people) I found it somewhat tight. Make sure that your luggage is foldable, otherwise the space would be even tighter. The room has either two twin bed or a double bed, a sink (with a kitchen faucet), bathroom, A/C, a PA system (you hear all the announcements of happenings on the boat like dive briefings, lectures, etc.), and a small shelf/closet. The bed was quite comfortable and there were reading lights.

The bathroom space was tight but it served it's purpose. You have a shower head and a marine toilet that is close to the size of a regular toilet, although it's partially driven with air. You get fresh clean towels every day at around noon when they clean the room. You also get an ample supply of soap and toilet paper.

The Food
All meals on the Pilot are served buffet style, although you are waited on for drinks, second helpings and dessert. For breakfast you get usually eggs, sausage, an assortment of breads, cereal and fruits. Lunch usually includes a soup (made with the previous day leftovers ;)), salad and a main dish like tacos, a sandwich or burgers. Dinner is more elaborate with salad, a main course like roast beef, bbq pork or carved turkey. It also includes "homemade" dessert like key-lime pie, cheesecake, pumpkin-walnut pie. If you are lucky, there could be dessert leftover after the night dive. For more details on actual the menu checkout:

http://www.nektoncruises.com/Liveaboards/Dining.aspx

Here's a picture of one of the buffets:

I believe this one was bbq pork with mashed potatoes. For the most part, the food was consistently good to excellent. Considering that the boat is self sufficient for an entire week (it is not supplied every day), they do a good job at keeping the food and vegetables fresh. Some of the desserts were really out of this world. The cooking was done by Leslie and Cristina, two gals from Honduras.

The Snacks
Snacks are available on every surface interval :). In between morning dives, sometimes a line forms for the morning cookies punctually at 10:30am. The cookies vary every day, one day could be peanut butter, another chocolate with nuts. In between afternoon dives, you get other snacks like this conch ceviche.

This is the only afternoon snack that I remember having, maybe because I was not aware of it. I only found out about the afternoon snacks after chatting with Cristina. That particular day she was cooking the ceviche, which is one of my favorite dishes.

The picture is of two of the crew, Cristina and Helena cooking ceviche. Helena is one of the instructors, and lived in Costa Rica for a while. Sometimes they have "galley duty", that is one of the dive crew would help out in kitchen either helping cooking, serving or doing the dishes. Cristina, orinally from Honduras, was the second cook or cook helper and also in charge of the room cleaning every day.

The Diving Facilities
The Nekton Pilot is indeed a diving machine. It was originally designed for diving in mind, which you can't say about other boats. It has a movable dive deck that can go up or down depending on the conditions and needs of the day. The tanks are aligned along the whole back of the deck (except for the middle staircase) and one half of the front side. Tanks are refilled in place with hoses. At the beginning of the trip you are assigned a place and that's where you leave your equipment. I could leave my BCD attached to my tank for the entire trip, with no need to switch tanks or assemble or reassemble things. There was also a cubby hole underneath for your mask, fins and snorkel.

There were three entry points (to the water) on the dive deck, one on starboard (left side), one on port (right side) and one in the middle. For the ones on the sides you had to jump about 3ft into the water. I preferred to use stairs to get into the water because of my camera, most photographers did. You can literally walk into the water with the middle stairs.

The dive deck has a "hanging bar" that is lowered on every dive. This bar is a convenience to do your safety stop. It sits at 15ft deep. Next to the bar there is always a tank with a regulator, in case you run out of air during your safety stop, which never happened to me.

There is always a rope running from the mooring line and another one from the dive deck to one of the small boats. On every dive, one of the small boats is put on the water and tied with a line. In case, you need to be "rescued", that is you popped up too far from the boat, they will come get you. The bubble watcher observing on the sun deck will ask you with signals whether you are ok. This happened to me one time, we popped up about 500 yards from the boat and the bubblewatcher signalled me whether I was ok, I was ok, but had a long swim ahead. This is when I got the chance to take a picture of the Pilot from the water.

For photographers, there are several convenient features on deck. On the First Deck there is a padded camera table with a rinse bucket (to test your housing) and air hose to spray the water out off your equipment once the dive is over.

Down on the dive deck itself there is another two rinse buckets for camera equipment next to middle entry stairs. Also on the dive deck there are two hot showers and an igloo with warm towels. There are other designated rinse buckets to rinse masks and wetsuits. Some of those buckets are really plastic trash cans (50 gall.) with labels.

Nitrox is available on the Pilot. Although it's advertised to be 28%, I did managed to get up 34%. Nitrox is generated by their onboard machine, therefore it varies, some days I would get 32% or 33%. I guess I was lucky because I was the only one on board using nitrox. Otherwise my "share" of oxygen would have been lower.

A Typical Day on board the Nekton Pilot
Here's what a typical day on the Pilot looks like: