Phil's Guide to Liveaboards. Facebook Live Video

Here’s the latest chat I did on our Facebook Page via FB Live. This time I talked about liveaboard trips with a mixture of advice and anecdotes.

I start my intro about 1 minute in and then get on subject around 6-7 minutes in. I’ll put links below the video to the companies and products mentioned during the chat by myself and the folk who commented.

The wine I was drinking is a Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Sierra de Andia Navarra. Not a bad drop for £7 a bottle.

Shark’s Bay Umbi Diving Village still operate a couple of liveaboards including a small one for no more than 11 guests. They also run day boat diving and provide a range of accommodation in the resort.

Om Ali or Um Ali is a very high calorie dessert that every Egyptian family has their own version. Here’s one recipe I found which we haven’t tried yet.

We did a number of trips with Blue-o-Two after Anne started diving including a HEPCA reef clean up and several with Paul ‘Duxy’ Duxfield. We haven’t used them for some time.

Great Escapes Diving Holidays are the guys who used to work for Maldives Scuba Tours and now have their own company. They are a great bunch and can offer some really good itineraries including special trips with the cruise directors David and Lisa Allison who also used to work for Scuba Tours.

Whirlwind and Mistral are boats in the Tornado Marine Fleet in the Red Sea and Scuba Travel are their UK agents.

Emperor Divers have a fleet of boats in the Red Sea and Maldives (including Emperor Atoll which was previously Sea Spirit). Their main agent is Diverse Travel but you can book through several UK diving travel agents. If you are interested in doing one of Duxy’s Red Sea liveaboard trips, he does these with Emperor.

Dive Safari Asia arrange liveaboards for divers and snorkelers. They are particularly known for providing someone who acts leader to help smooth out issues and look after guests. Our colleague Paul ‘Duxy’ Duxfield leads some of their trips each year, his website with some of his trip dates can be found here.

The dive guide turned artist I mentioned is David Allen. You can buy his pictures via his website www.davidaallen.co.uk

None of the companies linked to above have paid us to mention them.

If you are interested in joining myself, Anne and Duxy for Red Sea Photo Camp 2021 (it is a landbased workshop not a liveaboard) it will be in early June at Red Sea Diving Safaris’ Marsa Shagra resort. Email us at info@alphamarinephoto.com for more details. Use the same email for equipment and workshop enquiries as well.

If you would like to support us to do more videos and blogs, and to run the Alphamarine Photography Q and A group you can help by buying your underwater photography equipment from us and by booking on our workshops in the UK and Egypt. In addition we are in a number of affiliate programmes which mean that clicking through some links including the banner for Wex Photo/Video below and buying something will result in a small percentage being paid to us. Or you can simply donate through our ‘buy me a coffee’ page