All Star Blackbeards Morning Star

All Star Blackbeard’s Morning Star is a 20-metre sailing schooner built in 1983, one of the two identical boats Blackbeard’s Cruises runs year-round out of Nassau to the Exuma Cays. She is the cheapest way to dive the Bahamas and she is built accordingly: you sleep in a bunk in a shared dormitory, the heads and the shower are shared, and there are no private cabins on board.

There are nine numbered sleeping spaces spread across three dorm areas. Spaces 1–4 are single bunks, upper and lower, in the forward dorm, each with its own privacy curtain. Spaces 5–9 are double bunks, also upper and lower; 7, 8 and 9 sit right in the main salon — roomier, but with less privacy. The boat takes up to 24 guests. Air conditioning runs in every sleeping area and in the salon, each bunk has a shelf and hooks for your things, and bedding is provided. There are three heads, one per dorm area. There is a single shower with two heads: unlimited seawater to lather and wash, then roughly thirty seconds of fresh water to rinse off. Bring your own towels — the operator recommends two.

The diving is plentiful and straightforward: up to 19 dives over six nights, normally three day dives and one night dive per day, plus one shark feed on the Austin Smith wreck with Caribbean reef sharks. Dives are unguided — the instructor gives a thorough briefing with a sketch, and gets in the water for the drift dives and the shark feed. There is no nitrox on board. Tanks are 63, 80 and 100 cubic feet with yoke valves (DIN adaptor on request); weights and weight belts are included. Every diver must have a certification card and a dive computer — computers can be rented. Rebreathers are not allowed.

Three meals a day plus snacks and fruit in between. The cooking is home-style American, served buffet and eaten picnic-style on deck or in the salon. Beer, wine and rum punch are included in the rate. Wi-Fi on board is free and the sockets are US 110 V. Smoking is allowed at the stern only.

There is no fixed programme: every week the captain takes the schooner wherever the weather and visibility are best. That usually means the northern Exuma Cays — walls, patch reefs, blue holes and fast drifts through the cuts between the islands, with depths from 6 to 36 metres; sometimes Eleuthera is added. The sails go up at least once per trip when there is wind, but between dive sites she mostly motors. The best wind is from October through April.