Maldives Trip - Day 1: The Boat

I'm not sure I mentioned this before but the whole premise of this trip for my Dad and I was to go scuba diving, and since we'd never done a liveaboard and always wanted to we decided this was the ideal time to do that too. What is a liveaboard I don't here you ask.. well it is when you live.. aboard.. a ship for a few days and sail from dive site to dive site thus not wasting your precious diving time travelling from shore to site every day. It also allows you to cover a greater area of dive sites. The Maldives are perfect for this being a series of islands and atolls spanning several hundred square miles of the Indian Ocean.

Liveaboard boats can vary a great deal from tiny little ships with cramped living quarters with bunkbeds to palatial yachts with Jacuzzi's masseuses and a bar... our boat was on the more luxurious end of that particular spectrum. So for a first time liveaboard experience it was pretty damn amazing. I fear I may be setting myself up for disappointment with future liveaboards. But that's a problem for future me.


So, onwards with the tour of the boat! Lets start with our cabin:

Every cabin has its own bathroom, thought we also had a bathtub - however I would soon discover that there would be very little time for such indulgences! Our cabin was at the front of the boat, right behind the anchor which on some mornings became our alarm clock as anchor was being raised to get under way quite early. You've never heard an anchor until you've heard it waking you up at 5am and you can feel the hull next to you shaking from it.

This is the hallway you are greeted by when you leave our cabin. You walk all the way down it to the end where there are some stairs that take you up to a reception area at the back (stern) of the boat.

When you are seated there you can see this view into the boat that shows the stairs (behind the couch) you just came up and the canteen/bar beyond.

Here's a view of the canteen/bar/dive briefing area:

The second deck has another bar, a seating area and a jacuzzi, which we didn't end up using until the last night as we had such a busy schedule diving.

The top of the ship is a sundeck which was great for naps in between dives and taking in the views as we sailed to each destination.

But for the first day we were moored in a harbour where we begin and end the journey. We are surrounded by lots of different ships, many liveaboards like ours as well as industrial ships. I think the people on those ships probably also live on them.

That wasn't the only thing, every 15 minutes or so a sea plane would take off, no doubt transporting some lucky people to one of those fancy resorts with the huts built over the crystal clear waters of the atoll.

So this was home for the next 7 days as we sailed the Maldivian seas. Pretty damn sweet.

!steemitworldmap 4.183206 lat 73.518632 long Maldives Trip - Day 1: The Boat D3SCR

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