Cayman Brac Brac Reef Resort by Carl

Cayman Brac Brac Reef Resort, July 20-27 1996
Author: Carl Wilson

The Traveling Mountaineers chose Brac Reef Resort on the island of Cayman Brac as the location of their annual trip. Cayman Brac is named for the Brac (Scottish for cliff) located on the end of the island.

The Resort

The Brac Reef Resort has just recently been remodeled and I can attest to the quality and freshness of the rooms and the resort in general. The grounds and beaches were swept and raked daily.

All the rooms but two have a balcony or porch if you are on ground floor. You guessed it! I got a second floor room with neither a balcony or porch! The rooms have two double beds, an air-conditioning/heating unit typical of most motels, a nice large bath with a tub, color TV, and a clock radio. The rooms do not have a phone, which to me is a PLUS.

Meals are taken in a dining room large enough to seat all the guests of the resort. All meals are served buffet style meaning there is no waiting for the food. Food quality in general was good to excellent with only one major problem. The cook/chef has a real fondness for vast quantities of Garlic.

Breakfast included eggs, sausage, bacon, cereal, fruit and other items. Lunch was served on the patio and it was often grilled hamburgers, fish or meat. Supper was taken inside and once again you had the choice of two or three meats and plenty of vegetables.

All the meals offered salads or fruits and breads. Breakfast was 7:30 -8:30 AM, lunch 12:30-1:30 PM, supper was served 6:30-7:30 PM.

The Dive Operation

The resort was previously associated with Brac Aquatic, however last year the resort formed their own operation called Reef Divers. The Dive Operation is headed by Alan (ZAM) Zamarok who previously set up the dive operation at Riding Rock Inn on the Island of San Salavdor.

After checking in your room a visit the dive shop is in order where a gear bag and weight belt are issued. The dive personnel then arrange for your gear to be on the boat you are diving. At the end of the day you re-bag your gear and it is rinsed and stored until the next diving day, the weight belts are left on the boats. The operation also has a drying room to hang your diveskins or other wet things.

One thing about the gear bags did bother me a great deal. You are asked not to put computers, masks, or anything that can be broken in the bags. The dive operation throws and tosses the bags around and do not take responsibility for anything. Having a air-integrated computer and a prescription lens mask, this necessitated me carrying my regs, computer, & mask back and forth everyday. In other words, the gear bag system was of no value to me.

Diving

The week I was at Cayman Brac the visibility was 50-75 feet. We dived a lot of nice reefs and saw a lot of small marine life. I did see one nurse shark about 3 meters long, a few groupers in the 50-75 cm range, and a couple of Barracudas over 1 meter.

We made a trip to Bloody Bay wall on little Cayman Island about 10 miles away. After the dives we had lunch at the resort on Little Cayman which is a sister resort to Brac Reef Resort.

After lunch the boat that brought us over left to assist one of the other dive boats which suffered a mechanical failure. We were not advised of this until later and thus could not get our money, suntan lotions, or any other personal gear from the boat we arrived on.

While on Little Cayman island we were not allowed to charge anything, such as a drink at the bar, back to our room at Brac Reef as we had been told we could. Needless to say this was a long, boring afternoon, which got longer. About one and a half hours after we were schedule to leave, we finally left Little Cayman for Cayman Brac, in a small open boat with no water or refreshments. The trip back to Cayman Brac was a tiring and hot 75 minutes of bouncing over rough water in the sun with nothing to drink or do except hunt for non-existent shade.

The Brac Reef Divers like all other operations in the Cayman Island group belong to the Cayman Watersport Operators Association (CWOS) which sets the limits for diving in the Cayman Islands.

Diving limits are as follows:

1st dive 110 ft/50 min (computer) 100ft/50 min (tables) 2nd dive 60ft/50 min (computer) 50 ft/50 min (tables) 3rd dive 50ft/40 min )computer 40 ft/40 min (tables)

As one can imagine, the best you can do is one wall dive a day. If the wall starts deep at 70-80 feet, you can drop over the edge, but that is it.

We did a lot of shallow diving and the dive guides (particularly Zam) were very good at pointing out the marine life.

Opinions and Thoughts

I went to Cayman Brac to do some wall diving so I was very disappointed. If you are intersted in wall diving as I am, I would recommend a place outside of the Cayman Islands.

I was also unhappy with carrying my regs, computer, and mask back and forth everyday. Breakfast is a problem, the dining room does not open until 7:30AM and the diveboats live at 8:30 AM. This makes the time a little close in the mornings.

Flying down on Cayman Airways we had a three hour layover in Miami that stretched to a 6 hour layover. Cayman Air said it had a plane out of service due to a bird flying into a radar antenna/engine, the story varied depending on who you spoke with.

Cayman Air finally decided to combine 3 flights on one aircraft. When we took off, it was in a jet chartered from Miami Air. The plane did not go to Cayman Brac as scheduled, we sat on the runway in Miami for 40 minutes, then flew to Grand Cayman, sat on the runway at Grand Cayman for one hour, then flew to Cayman Brac. The Miami Air plane did not have any food, or beverages on board, just juice and cola.