What Do You Do On A liveaboard?

If you’ve ever wondered what you do on a liveaboard, I explain everything you need to know in this article. Also included in this article are tables of liveaboards as follows:

1. Liveaboard dive boats with pros and cons for each dive boat.
2. Non-diver activities on each Liveaboard dive boat.
3. Liveaboard dive boat day/night itinerary trip lengths.
4. Maximum number of dives for each liveaboard dive boat.

A liveaboard is a bit like a floating hotel, so instead of booking a hotel and taking a boat ride to your dive sites each day, your liveaboard takes you to your dive sites instead. Often times you wake up at a different dive site each morning, and if you choose to do the early morning dive from your liveaboard dive boat, you will often dive before breakfast.

What do you do on a liveaboard?

When you’re on a liveaboard you’ll scuba dive, eat, sleep and get involved in other activities, depending on what the liveaboard offers in other activities. Other activities on liveaboards include land excursions, stand-up-paddle boards, kayaking, fishing or getting to know your fellow divers.

The best way to dive anywhere in the world is by a scuba diving liveaboard. You can check the latest and best deals on liveaboards using the following window:

What are the advantages of liveaboard dive boats?

1. You do more dives on a liveaboard.
2. Better chance to do night diving.
3. Most liveaboards are all-inclusive, so your dives, dining and accommodation are all included.
4. You will meet likeminded guests interested in scuba diving.
5. No need to worry about finding a dive buddy.
6. Dive remote dive sites that are out of range of day boats.
7. Get to popular dive sites before the day boats.

Table of liveaboard dive boats with pros and cons for each dive boat

This list of all scuba diving liveaboards includes the pros and cons of each liveaboard dive boat, and is in descending customer rating order, followed by Scuba Diving Luxury Rating (SDE Lux Rating, see below), so the liveaboards with the highest customer rating and the best SDE lux rating will be at the top of the list. If you want to change the list order, use the “Sort by” dropdown below.

The column headed “SDE Lux Rating %” is my own Liveaboard Luxury Rating which I’ve assigned to all liveaboards. To discover how the rating is calculated for your chosen liveaboard dive boat, click the liveaboard name link in the “Discover Liveaboard” column above (also this is explained in more detail below).

To help you to choose the right diving liveaboard for you, the “Scuba Diving Earth Liveaboard Luxury Rating” (SDE Lux Rating) means you can compare each liveaboard with other liveaboards on a like-for-like basis. This makes choosing the right liveaboard much easier.

The maximum rating for any liveaboard is 100%, and this rating is split between the 6 features listed below:

1. Diver benefits: A higher ‘diver benefits‘ score means there are more features specifically for scuba divers. These include onboard nitrox, dive courses, gear rental etc.
2. Liveaboard design features: The higher the ‘liveaboard design features‘ score, the more the dive boat has been designed with scuba divers in mind. This includes whether the dive boat was custom built for divers, if it has charging stations, outside showers etc.
3. Cabin luxury: A high score in ‘cabin luxury‘ means the cabins on the liveaboard offer better features. These might include ensuite cabins, air-conditioning, daily housekeeping, seaviews, TVs etc.
4. Onboard comfort: A high score in ‘onboard comfort‘ means there are more onboard features to make your dive trip feel more luxurious. These include what towels are provided on the liveaboard (always important for travelling light), complimentary toiletries, crew ratios etc.
5. Food luxury: If you are a foodie then ‘food luxury‘ will be important to you, as a high score on this rating will mean there’s more on offer. These might include the type of food served onboard, the dietary requirements catered for, vegan food, vegetarian food, buffet style, fine dining etc.
6. Drink luxury: If you like a drink in the evenings you may look for a higher score in ‘drink luxury‘ score, but this score also includes drinking water and soft drinks too.

The “SDE Luxury Rating Total” is calculated by adding the totals from each of the above features and benefits. The higher the SDE Luxury Rating, the more features and benefits the liveaboard has, which leads on nicely to how to use the SDE Luxury Rating.

How to use the SDE Luxury Rating score

When choosing the liveaboard dive boat for you, your decision is helped by customer scores, which is how the liveaboards in the above table are sorted in descending order.

If you are stuck choosing between two or three of these liveaboards, where each one has a high customer score out of 10 and that have itineraries you like, use the SDE Luxury Rating score to help narrow down your choice.

Think about it like using Booking.com when searching for the best hotel to stay at. Booking.com also use a customer score where each customer rates hotels out of 10. This is similar to the liveaboard customer rating, which is also rated out of 10.

But let’s say you only like to stay in hotels rated 9 and above on Booking.com, but you also want the hotel to have WIFI or parking, or to have a swimming pool etc. The features each hotel has is secondary to the score out of 10.

In the case of liveaboards, the SDE Lux Rating system can also be used as a secondary tool in the same way to help you determine which liveaboard offers the best features to suit you.

Each of the liveaboards linked-to from the above table will be individually scored. Which means that if cabin luxury is important to you, focus on this score to help you choose your liveaboard. But if diver benefits are your top priority, use this score first, and so on.

What are the disadvantages of liveaboard dive boats?

1. Not ideal for non-diving partners.
2. If you suffer from sea sickness you may not enjoy a long trip at sea on a liveaboard dive boat.
3. Liveaboard dive boats can be expensive.
4. You cannot normally book liveaboards with flights as you can with resort holidays.
5. You are restricted to the space of the liveaboard for the trip duration.

Table of non-diver activities on each Liveaboard dive boat

As liveaboard diving is not necessarily good for non-diving partners, you may like to use the following table of all liveaboard dive boats that includes a list of non-diving activities. This table is sorted using the “Non-Diving %” column in descending order, which means that the liveaboard dive boats with the most non-diving activities are at the top of the list.

Use the column “Non-Diving Activities” to discover which non-diving activities are included, to see if your partner will be happy onboard whilst you enjoy your diving.

What to expect on your liveaboard trip

You can expect to do more diving than you might do if you did a resort-based trip, and you can choose from a short trip to a longer trip to suit your timeframe. Liveaboard timeframes start from 1-2 days and can be for up to 18 days in length,

Table of liveaboard dive boat day/night itinerary trip lengths

This list of all scuba diving liveaboards includes itinerary lengths and is in descending customer rating order, followed by Scuba Diving Luxury Rating (SDE Lux Rating, see above), so the liveaboards with the highest customer rating and the best SDE lux rating will be at the top of the list. If you want to change the list order, use the “Sort by” dropdown below.

Maximum number of dives on a liveaboard

If you want to increase the number of dives you have and to improve your experience and diving skills, a scuba diving liveaboard is definitely the way to go. When I first started diving, I booked on a number of Red Sea dive trips to improve my diving and to gain lots of experience. The two best things about the Red Sea are it’s cheap and it has fantastic diving.

So if you want to do more diving, this list of all scuba diving liveaboards includes the total number of dives you can do on the liveaboard. I have also included a column to show which liveaboard dive boats include scuba diving courses too, in case you want to advance your dive certification level.

Table of maximum number of dives for each liveaboard dive boat

The table is in descending customer rating order, followed by Scuba Diving Luxury Rating (SDE Lux Rating, see above), so the liveaboards with the highest customer rating and the best SDE lux rating will be at the top of the list. If you want to change the list order, use the “Sort by” dropdown below.

I hope you enjoyed this article about what do you do on a liveaboard

If this article hasn’t answered all of your questions. If you have more questions either about snorkelling or scuba diving (or specifically about what do you do on a liveaboard), please comment below with your questions.

There will also be many more articles about scuba and scuba diving safety tips (and on snorkelling too) for you to read and learn about this fabulous sport.