Kenneth’s Dive Centre

In Depth

Kenneth’s Dive Center is a friendly dive operator located in Basseterre in St Kitts. It is owned and managed by Kittitian Kenneth Samuel and is the longest-established dive shop in the island, having started in the mid 70s when the sport was still young around the Caribbean.

The company has three dive boats (50ft, 40ft and 32ft), each with a ladder and a dive platform, which can carry up to 16 or18 divers. There are three dive instructors on staff and the dive ratio is never more than 10 divers per dive leader. Usually it is more like ten per two.

Kenneth’s has a shop front in a brightly coloured building on Bay Road, the waterfront road in Basseterre and much of the activity is based out of here. It is just a short walk to the dock, from which the dive boats leave, in Port Zante (which also happens to be the cruise ship terminal, so it is ideally located for diving if you are arriving on board ship). The company offers transportation from the hotels in Frigate Bay, and they can also arrange for rooms for you in town. Equipment is stored on board the dive boats or at the shop.

Dive trips are generally two-tank dives in the morning (9.30 – 12.30 or 1pm) and if things are busy there is a trip in the afternoon as well (approx 1.30-4.30). Night diving is available on request if there are enough people (minimum six) and the company also takes out snorkelling trips (using their spare boats). Kenneth’s Dive Center offers dive packages if you wish to go out a number of days in a row and of course they will rent you all your equipment if you are not travelling with it.

The dive sites Kenneth’s visits are almost all on the leeward shore of St Kitts, mostly to the south of Basseterre along the South East peninsular. Several of the sites are beyond the south-eastern tip of the island, in the Narrows between the island and neighbouring Nevis. Most of the diving around St Kitts is reef diving, with coral garden formations, drop offs and some pinnacles, but there is also a handful of wrecks around the island (though there is no penetration inside the wrecks).

Kenneth’s Dive Center is affiliated to PADI and offers introductory diving including resort courses (with training in the pool at the Frigate Bay Hotel or in protected sea) and also ‘referral diving’, in which you do the classroom and sheltered water training at home and then your open water dives in the Caribbean. If you wish to take scuba further, then they offer training courses up to Dive Master certification, including Open Water Diver, Advanced Open Water and Rescue Diver and of course Divemaster.

Kenneth himself is the original Kittitian diver. As a young man he was a fisherman and would free-dive for conch, lobster and fish. He was introduced to scuba by a guest at the old Jack Tar resort and started taking divers out himself, in about 1974, initially in his fishing boat. In his 30 years as a diver he has taken the astronaut Buzz Aldrin and French naturalist and film maker Jean Michel Cousteau.