A Week on the Cayman Aggressor

Getting There

      Getting to Grand Cayman is easy for those in the Midwest and the East Coast.  Travel to Miami and take a one hour and five minute flight to Grand Cayman.  The Airport is relatively modern and provides no hassles with immigration or customs.  The Cayman Aggressor folks are allowed to meet you at the airport and take your baggage but are not allowed to transport you personally.  However getting a cab is painless and relatively inexpensive, and the $10  that it costs is reimbursed at the end of the trip by the Aggressor.  The airport is about a ten minute cab ride from George Town where the Aggressor docks.

Cayman Aggressor

The Boat

      The boat is, to say the least, gorgeous.  It was commissioned about a year and a half ago and still presents an image of being clean and modern. The Cayman Aggressor IV is 110 feet long, made entirely of aluminum, with a beam of 22 feet and a draft of 6 feet. In addition to its 3000 gallon water storage, a desalinator makes 1200 gallons per day. With a speed of 15 knots, it makes the crossing to Little Cayman in about 8 hours.

Reef Scenic  

     The Cayman Aggressor IV has lots of room in the common areas. There is a dining room (plus computer room) that can easily and comfortably seat 20; many meals are served in this dining room including all breakfasts.  In addition, a secondary dining area is available on the top deck which features built in tables and stools seating all guests comfortably.  The top deck dining area is covered but there is an uncovered sun area with deck chairs available for folks wishing to get their share of sun. Below deck, there are 9 guest bedrooms. One of these guest rooms is oversized, two are undersized and have a shared bathroom, and the rest are normal, good sized live aboard rooms with private heads and showers.  These rooms seem relatively impervious to sound in the dining area above.  There is a moderate amount of storage area but not as much as other boats I have been on such as the Bilikiki.

Logistics

      Dive briefings (a multi-color map) were at 8 AM and 2 PM.  Normally, unless there was consensus to move the boat, the first two dives were at one location, and then the next three (two day and one night) were at a second location.  As such five dives per day were offered on days one through five and two dives on the last day for a total of 27 available dives.  On one day an early morning dive was offered because that night was a crossing from Little Cayman to Grand Cayman and that crossing consumed 8 hours;  this made a night dive impossible.  Meals were served at 7 AM, 12:30 PM, and 6 PM.  Captain Allen Roberts was doing double duty as chef and from the comments of all guests was doing a great job of filling in.  Personally, I would have found it difficult to beat the meals served on the Aggressor. In between dives, sinful snacks were available part of the time and more wholesome snacks available the rest of the time.  Who can pass up warm chocolate brownies???

“Spot” The Dolphin

      On Little Cayman, Bloody Ball Wall, we encountered a dolphin who the dive professionals call “Spot”.  This dolphin had clearly been domesticated at some point, as it did not act as a wild dolphin would despite being totally free to roam wherever it wished.  This dolphin stayed with the Aggressor for nearly eight hours.  Not only  would Spot play with people on snorkel (his preference) but he would also tolerate people on scuba, an unusual behavior for wild dolphins.  Spot stayed with the boat until it got dark, then retreating somewhere unknown at that time.  When we first encountered Spot, we were also visited by a Caribbean Reef Shark.  This shark clearly was behaving in an abnormal fashion and had to have been hurt in some way as it clearly had open wounds and was behaving aggressively towards people on snorkel.  After snorkelers were out of the water, the shark retreated and was not seen again.

Reef Scenic

The Diving

      While some dives on Grand Cayman are available (we started with Babylon and ended as described below with Devil’s Grotto and Stingray City), most dives, weather permitting, are on Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. Little Cayman was an eight hour crossing from Grand Cayman the first night that all guests were aboard.  This crossing can be rather rough but in July was fairly easy allowing sleep with no difficulty for most guests.

Reef Scenic     Reef Scenic

      We had three full days on Bloody Bay Wall in Little Cayman.  Not only did this area have great wide angle photographic opportunities but it also provided friendly groupers, lots of turtles (mainly small ones), and abundant gargantuan lobster.

Reef Scenic

     The final day has two dives on Grand Cayman before packing up and returning to Georgetown.  Stingray City is the first dive of the day but it is a memorable one.  Having been on this dive once before I knew what to expect.  Basically each person that wants it is given squid to feed the stingrays.  The stingrays at  Stingray City  are obviously well trained that divers and boats means food.  They are also well versed in ways to try and trick you out of the food in the quickest possible way.  This includes bumping into you, flooding your mask, and other brute force ways of getting you to release your squid.  They are, however, despite the large size of some, quite gentle with no danger to divers or observers. Reef Scenic

      Devil’s Grotto, the final dive of the trip, is a relatively shallow dive with a group of caves and caverns.  The structure of some of these caves is unusual in that when the sun is high, the sunlight has an interesting dancing effect in the caves that can be photographed to good result.
Serenity

Bottom Line

      The bottom line?  Would I repeat this trip?  Despite being a bigot for Pacific dive locations, I would definitely repeat this trip.  The Aggressor was a great boat, good diving (for the Caribbean), good crew, and good food.  However, as with any live aboard, the chemistry of the group can dictate whether a trip is successful or not.  In this case the group was very compatible;  no one dived dangerously, no one hogged photo opportunities or in any way negatively impacted the enjoyment of other people on the trip.