Golden Dawn
In early March, my adult daughter and I flew to Port Moresby to board the Golden Dawn which was bound to the Eastern Fields and onward to the Australian reefs of Boot and Ashmore. She and I had been there 3 years earlier and a shorter itinerary limited our diving opportunities to the inner part of the Eastern Fields.
Well, weather intervened and a cyclonic weather pattern made our trip out into the open water a high risk endeavor. After discussing options with us, the owner and captain, Craig DeWitt, sent us down the coast to the Milne Bay diving area. This did carve a couple of days of diving out of our two week trip and the diving along the southern coast is not that great. The trip out to the Eastern Fields is a bit risky and open waters does threaten these itineraries. I highly recommend on planning for a 14 day trip so that the boat can make adjustments and secure a good chunk of diving no matter what the weather.
The diving in Milne Bay ranged from spectacular to mundane at times. Banana Bommie is rated as one of the top 100 dive sites in the world and in was great. We dove several other dive sites like that where fish density was as high as I ever seen. These sites compared very favorably with the dive sites around the Raja Ampat area which is considered the gold standard in dive quality. The one missing ingredient: lots of purple and pink soft corals. We saw some, but not a lot.
Critter diving was also very good. The dive sites at Dinah’s Beach are one part coral pinnacle and one part critters. And the critters are very much in abundance. Maybe a notch below Lembeh, but only a small notch. And, you will never see another diver the entire day. On the way home, we stopped at a passage where Craig thought that the critter diving might be good and we hit the jack pot. It may well have been the best hour of dive photography that I have ever experienced. My daughter found a new critter about once every 90 seconds, and I hammered my strobes. Amazing. I might have been the first one to ever dive this site.
The Golden Dawn and the owner, Craig DeWitt, are pretty much inseparable. The boat is a bit small, especially compared to Indonesian boat that are bigger and more comfortable at times. But Craig is amazingly excited about the reefs and the secrets that they give up on each new trip. No one knows any more about this part of the underwater world than Craig. He is a class act and his recent marriage to Cam has softened him up a bit too. There is no one in the dive industry that I respect more than him.
The service is good but does lack some attention to detail. The attention to detail and pampering that you get in Indonesia are sometimes lacking. No hot towels when you come up from a dive. No hot chocolate, but you do get an great afternoon bakery creation every day. The crew is competent, but not attentive at times.
The food was good, especially our dinners. Breakfasts were very good as well, but lacked variety. His new wife, Cam, seems to add a nice “woman’s touch” and we liked we she brought to the boat. The dinners were very good, especially when we caught a Spanish mackerel and had baked fresh fish on several days.
So, who would like this boat? If luxury and detail are important to you, you should go to one of the nice boats in Indonesia like the Damai or Arenui. If you don’t mind doing some things for yourself, Craig and his boat, the Golden Dawn, are a great place to go. I had the misfortune of learning several days into the trip and a long time friend and neighbor had died suddenly back at home. So that raised the question—if I had one last dive trip to take where would I go back to? Milne Bay would get a lot of thought, especially if that were the intended spot that didn’t require 500 mile round trip of sailing to get to. Several of the dives were amongst the best I have ever done. For those of us who love the ocean, spending a final dive trip with Craig would be my final choice.
