Dive forms & frequently asked questions

Only if you are taking a PADI course. All guests need the boat waiver. The PADI form is for course students only.

You will fill in the boat waiver at check-in, although you are welcome to print it in advance. The medical waiver is required for any PADI course. If you are doing a course, we recommend you print it out in advance. (Any YES answers on a medical form require a doctor's sign-off in advance.)

Book your course date after you have your physician's approval in hand. We cannot proceed with your course without it.

You must complete a boat waiver for each trip. The medical waiver is only required if you are a course student, or if you have had any changes to your medical status since the last time you dived.

Bermuda has great diving all year round. In particular, Bermuda is famous for being surrounded by hundreds of historical shipwrecks (and even a few we sank on purpose), which are surrounded by a wide variety of corals and marine life very similar to those found throughout the Caribbean and Florida Keys.

The reef areas are widely interspersed with sand holes – which means that the underwater visibility can vary a lot depending on wind strength and direction. If the wind has been calm for a few days, the sand and silt settles to the bottom and makes the visibility very good – but if it’s windy, the visibility can be not-so-good, or even quite low depending on how bad the weather has been.

The best visibility is during calm weather in the colder months – because the temperatures are lower, there’s less particle content in the water, so the visibility can sometimes be twice as far as it is in the summer months! (see the Diving Table for averages by month) In the warmest months, the water temperature is high enough that you only need a dive skin, or don’t need any wetsuit at all; in the winter months, a 5mm all-over suit is generally enough.

Yes! If by “lost” you mean “awesome.” But if you mean Gilligan’s Island-type lost, then no – our Captains always carry a necklace that prevents mysterious disappearances. At least, we have it somewhere. Now where did I leave that thing......

In general, you want to stay in the central or Western parishes. Our location is at Island Tour Center, located on King’s Wharf (the cruise ship pier) out in Dockyard. If you stay at the Pompano Beach Club, then they can assist you with a taxi to Dockyard, which takes about 15 minutes. Cambridge Beaches is also very close to the Dockyard – less than 10 minutes in a taxi.

We have set Guidelines on when we ask people to do a Refresher course, depending on how many total dives they have done and how long it’s been since they were last diving – ask us about that when you’re booking and we’ll help you figure out the best way to proceed. Generally, we put everyone in the water with a Guide, especially if it’s their first time diving with us, but if they’re diving for multiple days and don’t necessarily want a Guide every day, they don’t have to go with one.

Experienced divers are covered in our set of Guidelines too (see question just above this one) and if they don’t want to go with a Guide, we do our best to buddy them up with comparable divers, or sometimes with one of our Frequent Diver Club members (residents of Bermuda). We encourage everyone to tell us what they’d prefer, and we’ll do our best to make that work wherever possible, subject to local regulations.

It depends. Our crew will ask you whether you need help with setting up your gear, and if you prefer to do your own, you certainly can – or if you prefer that we set it up for you, we certainly will. Students in any Course (including a Refresher course) have to set up their own gear, as part of the Course requirements.

Either way, we will definitely check your gear before you get in the water – and if no one asks you whether you need help with your gear, or you don’t think anyone has checked it, please let the Captain know so that he/she can sort it out for you. BWD no longer has a fixed policy that all certified divers set up their own gear – that changed along with new ownership in June 2012. While it is true that dive professionals can gauge a lot about divers from how well they are able to set up their gear, we don’t use that as a reason for a fixed policy – we’re focused on customer service just as much as we are on customer safety.

BWD uses aluminum “80s” – which are standard 80 cubic foot capacity tanks. We have a small number of “60s” for kids or smaller adults who are good with air consumption and prefer to use a smaller tank. We have some tanks that accept a DIN adaptor – if you need a DIN adaptor; please let us know when booking so we can check availability. If we don’t have a DIN valve tank available for your regulator when you arrive, you’re welcome to use one of our Rental regs at no extra cost. Our Rental gear is mainly made up of ScubaPro gear.

For the boat trips, we have morning and afternoon trips in the high season (summer months) and morning trips only in the shoulder season (winter months). Please try to arrive on time for Check-in so that the boat can leave on time. It’s not necessary to arrive earlier than the Check-in time – we start processing paperwork at that time, and then distribute Rental gear and get set up on the boat prior to departure.

PLEASE NOTE - it is more likely in the winter time, that we will go to further distant sites and might therefore have travel times longer than the normal times in the summer. We will always primarily be looking for the best conditions on any given day. If you have time constraints - e.g. a ship back-on-board time on the same day - please let us know at check-in.

ALL CHECK IN AND DEPARTURE TIMES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE – PLEASE CONFIRM TIMES WHEN YOU BOOK.

BWD is a PADI dive center, so we offer PADI courses from beginner courses up to and including Assistant Instructor level training. We also offer a variety of Specialty courses – check out our website’s Courses page for more details. You can bundle Specialty courses in with your dive package, if you want to! You’re diving anyway – why not learn something?

Here at Blue Water Divers, we believe there’s no such thing as a silly question. However, we do get some really interesting questions from time to time.

We’ll do our best to answer anything and everything, but if we look confused, it’s probably just that we haven’t had our coffee yet.....

And yes – if you throw up underwater, the fish will eat it.