The Sea Serpent

Photo: Pat Morrissey Photo: Pat Morrissey

A week is a short time in diving. So, if you want to make the most of your break in the Red Sea, a luxury liveaboard could be the answer. Words and photographs by Pat Morrissey

So, what’s new?
A luxury liveaboard dive boat doing something a little bit different in the Red Sea – a whistle-stop tour of dive sites. It sails through the night, so in just six days you get to see what would normally take two weeks. The Sea Serpent was commissioned in August 2001, ‘by divers, for divers’ and has been running specialist trips out of Hurghada every week since then. A sister ship to the Royal Emperor and the Miss Veena, the Sea Serpent is a 34m hardwood and fibreglass monster with two sun decks towering over the biggest dive platform you’ve ever seen. She boasts an extensive stateroom, first-class cuisine, a mini refrigerator in every cabin, a choice of cylinder sizes, nitrox and air fills and, fittingly enough, she is moored right outside the Marriott Hotel’s back door.

And how’s the diving?
You’ll see all the usual marine suspects in abundance. And since you only dive the jewels of the Red Sea, each dive is as good as the last. From next May, the company will be running an itinerary coming out of Marsa Alam and visiting southern Red Sea sites, such as Zabargad Island, Rocky Islet and St John’s reef.
The dive sites are famous for the quality of their corals, as well as the near certainty of encounters with larger pelagics. On one dive on Dolphin Reef, we saw a manta, six white-tips and three hammerheads! We also saw large shoals of yellow snappers, sweetlips, anthias and goatfish. The night dives were (apparently) just as exciting, with Spanish dancers and sleeping parrotfish aplenty, although some of us preferred to forego this pleasure for a few glasses of chilled Egyptian wine instead.

You set your kit up once, and then the dive guides are always on hand to help. The guides are extremely safety-conscious, without treating you like school children on an outing. They just ask that you respect their reefs and have a good time doing it. The moorings used are permanent and well-maintained – no prospect of anchors dragging over corals here – and the boat runs two reliable 5m RIBs, which whisk you to and from the various sites. When a school of dolphins appeared on three consecutive days, the crew was happy to launch a RIB and to encourage everyone to snorkel with them.

Accommodation any good?
You won’t believe how good! Each passenger is provided with their personal Sea Serpent robe, as well as clean blue towels, changes of bed linen and a constant supply of tea, coffee and biscuits. There’s a small fridge in each cabin too, handy for photographers to store film, and an en suite shower and toilet. The dining room seats up to 20 people, and there is always more food – Middle Eastern and European – on the menu than you could possibly want. It’s as though the Hilton had somehow attached itself to a liveaboard.

Tell us about the region
The Red Sea has a reputation for picking up a bit of a swell – making some divers wary about liveaboard life. There’s no doubt that once you get away from the shelter of the coastline and start exploring the waters around the Brothers or Daedalus, you’re probably more likely to experience the real nature of this rich stretch of water. In 1994 the Egyptian government’s regulations made access to the marine parks all but impossible. These were relaxed four years later, but the stipulations imposed still meant that you could only sail from Hurghada or Safaga. The vast majority of vessels couldn’t feasibly get visitors down to Zabargad Island or Daedalus Reef and back to port within a week. The Sea Serpent represents the logical answer to such restrictions – it travels at night, meaning you can cover a typical two-week itinerary in a week. Flying from Gatwick on a Friday morning, you can now hop on board at Hurghada and cover Panorama Reef, both of the Brothers, Daedalus and Dolphin Reefs, as well as the Elphinstone – all within six days. The only downside is that because of the packed schedule, you’ll only get a chance to dive each site once, which some underwater photographers might find a bit restrictive. Each reef has its own area of excellence, of course, but it’s no exaggeration to say that here you’ll be seeing more first-class dive sites in a shorter space of time than at almost anywhere else in the world.

If you don’t have time for a fortnight’s diving, but want to see the best that the Red Sea has to offer, you’ll love the way the Sea Serpent weaves her weekly magic. You can dive beautiful sites, indulge in a spot of sun bathing and enjoy a cold beer in the evening as the sun goes down.

Diving World offer trips on the Sea Serpent, prices start at £930 per person per week. DIVEChannel also organises holidays. Hayes and Jarvis can also arrange trips.