Ruby Runner’s primary purpose is scuba diving charters and we go diving every weekend and on public holidays if conditions allow. We also run dives during the week when there are sufficient numbers of divers available. That tends to be quite often around December and quite seldom in winter. We never schedule dives more than 4 days in advance because with Cape Town’s challenging conditions that would just mean having to cancel many of them. This is the reason we send out our weekly newsletter on a Thursday – We have a reasonably accurate forecast of weather and hence dive conditions for the weekend. Doing it this way we find that we have to cancel very few dives. It also means you have to book your dives as soon as you get the newsletter because from Friday morning we fill up quickly.
You can subscribe to our newsletter on the Newsletters page of this website.
We only dive when dive conditions are good regardless of how many bookings we have or how urgently our clients want to dive. For Cape Town, “good conditions” equate to visibility better than about 5m and with surface conditions that allow for safe boating. Off course there will be days when we end up diving with bad visibility because we launched when we thought it was good, or we cancel because we thought conditions were bad when they turned out to be good. That will happen – all we can do is keep well informed of weather and sea conditions to keep those days to an absolute minimum.
BlueFlash is focused on the local diving market and you will find we quite seldom have tourist divers or dive students doing courses onboard. Not that they are not welcome – they are, it’s just that dive instruction and tourism diving are not our main focus. Scheduling dives only on good diving days means that we run less dive charters than some of our competitors but have better dives and happier clients as a result.
Dives cost R500 per person. No equipment or leadership is included in that price and if you need these please indicate so when booking.
A 10-dive card bought upfront will cost you only R4 000.
We have air and nitrox cylinders, weight belts, BCs and regulators available for hire and we can fill your own air and nitrox cylinders at reasonable rates.
Underwater photographers are welcome and will find the spaciousness most useful for storage of your camera equipment on the way out to the dive site.
We are a “Tech Diver Friendly” operation. Technical divers (open circuit and rebreather) are welcome to join us on any dive where bottom times may be extended or deco done within limits. Alternatively, join us on dedicated tech dives to wrecks in the 45m to 60m range. These dives scheduled a few times every year. Contact Grant for more info.
What sets BlueFlash apart from the other Cape Town dive operators, aside from having the best boat, is our focus on exploration diving. So many of the Cape’s reefs are unseen by human eyes and there are numerous wrecks that remain unfound or are hardly ever dived because they are far from boat launching sites or are challenging in some way. Those are the wrecks and reefs that we explore as often as possible. We still run dives to the more regular sites but no other dive operator can match us when it comes to exploration or expedition style diving. If that type of diving appeals to you, you should join our colourful team to experience a whole new world underwater.
Here are some tips and bits of info about diving with us:
- The launch time specified is the time the boat leaves the jetty or slipway not the time you should arrive! Make your arrival 30 min to 45 min before the launch time. If you are late and can’t make the launch time we can’t wait for you and you will be billed for the dive.
- If you cancel a booked dive on the day of the dive you will be billed for the dive. If you cancel the day before or even the night before we won’t bill you.
- We do not provide leadership on our dives. If you want a DM please request one when booking your dive.
- You will not be allowed to dive at a site that is deeper than the depth you are qualified to dive – don’t even try.
- We highly recommend that every buddy pair diving with us have at least 1 decent SMB and reel.
- Drysuits are highly recommended for diving in the Cape. Most of our regular divers dive in drysuits and will tell you it’s the only way to dive the Cape.
