Scuba divers from around the globe flock to the Red Sea, enticed by the allure of pristine shipwrecks, vibrant coral reefs, and the chance to encounter diverse shark species. The Red Sea is best explored by liveaboard, given the considerable distances between the top dive sites.
When diving in Egypt and other Red Sea destinations, you’ll encounter a variety of underwater environments, including sheer walls, vibrant reefs, pinnacles, and open-ocean drifts. Some of the most popular dive sites are the area’s shipwrecks.
Why Choose a Liveaboard in the Red Sea?
- Diverse Marine Life: Encounters with reef sharks, oceanic whitetips, hammerheads, tiger sharks, and thresher sharks are common. Lucky divers may also spot whale sharks, dugongs, and dolphins.
- Varied Underwater Environments: Explore sheer walls, vibrant reefs, pinnacles, and open-ocean drifts.
- Wreck Diving: The Red Sea is renowned for its impressive shipwrecks, offering unique diving experiences.
Ocean Lovers: A Detailed Overview
At 45 metres long and 9 metres wide, Ocean Lovers is one of the largest Red Sea diving safari liveaboards. The boat has five decks and 16 well-appointed cabins. Whether you're coming alone, with a partner, or in a group, there's the perfect accommodation for you on this wonderful, and very well-run boat.
The first impression when boarding is that the BlueForce 3 is that it is big and shiny. It was built in 2018 is one of the newest and most luxurious boats for diving the Red Sea and Egypt. It has been built for diving and a lot of attention went into details to make it comfortable.
Boat Features and Amenities
The main colors are blue, white, and yellow which goes very well with the Red Sea landscape. There is a lot of natural wood onboard giving it a relaxed feeling. Practical aspects have not been forgotten.
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- Top Deck: Enjoy a 360° view of the Red Sea, perfect for dolphin spotting or stargazing.
- Upper Deck: Features two double cabins at the front and a large outdoor lounge sofa area.
- Sun Deck: Includes a Jacuzzi, eight guest cabins, and an outdoor bar with tables.
- Main Deck: A huge dive deck, with loads of space for everyone to gear up. There's even a charging station for items like GoPros, phones or cameras, with slots for every guest. Moving forward, we have a huge air-conditioned lounge saloon with a large flat-screen tv and media system, plus lots of comfortable sofas, arranged well to allow socialising as well as privacy. And in front of the lounge saloon is the restaurant (dining room) where the meals are served throughout the trip.
- Lower Deck: Home to six standard twin cabins, all with air conditioning and a private bathroom.
Cabins
I stayed in the superior deck cabin number 10. There is plenty of natural light due to the large panoramic window. Attention has been paid to the lighting of the room with fancy led lights and electric charging points. There are 2 beds. The bed is super comfortable and a plush duvet is provided. I really liked the blue Arabic-style flooring tiles. The shower is separated by a glass so you don’t wet the whole bathroom each time you shower. There is hot and cold water and the water pressure was great. All the cabins have a similar size and layout.
Whichever cabin you stay in, you're guranteed to have plenty of storage space and a great night's sleep.
Dining Experience
The dining room is large and has 5 tables. The large windows let in plenty of daylight, giving a spacious feeling. And the food is simply delicious!
Breakfast would be served after the first dive at around 8 am. It consisted of eggs, bread, 4 types of cheese! I loved the fruits platter. For coffee lovers, a Nespresso coffee machine is available and Nespresso capsules cost 1.5 Eur. Lunch and diner consisted of a large buffet with 2 or 3 meat dishes, plenty of vegetables, Rice and Pasta. The food was mostly western style with some Egyptian dishes (Hummus, Okra, falafels…) there were plenty of options for vegetarians too. Most dishes were very appetizing and the quantity and quality of the food provided were impressive. Needless to say that we didn’t get hungry during this diving cruise.
Egypt is known for its food poisoning issue.
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Diving Experience
The team on the Blueforce 3 is very solid. A lot of attention to detail was obvious on the dive deck. They would help us put on diving gear. The tanks were perfectly filled every time. The Blueforce 3 liveaboard caters to advanced divers as they request divers have a minimum of 50 dives. I always prefer to dive on boats that have a minimum number of dives required because it usually means that all the divers onboard have a good level.
For some of the dives, we could access the site directly from the dive platform. It was as easy as putting your gears on and jump in the water. Coming back up was through 2 ladders at the back of the boat. We would walk up those ladders with our fins and tanks. Other dive sites had to be accessed with the tender boats. There are 3 tender boats available. We would walk into the boat with the tank on our back.
Guides are one of the most important aspects of a great liveaboard trip. Both our guides Sergio and Mahmoud were great. They have been diving those sites for years and it shows. The briefings before the dives given by were some of the most complete I have seen on a liveaboard. Sergio had maps of the site, drawings of the wreck; not only would we understand the dive plan but we would often get a history lesson and get some information about the fishes and animals we were likely to see.
Water temperature during our cruise in the North Red Sea in June was between 25 and 26 degrees. So I would recommend bringing a 5 mm wetsuit. This trip to the Northern Red Sea is really designed for divers. There are no activities offered besides diving. I also think that most of the sites we visited ( especially the wrecks) would not be suitable for snorkelers as they were quite deep.
TIP: The Blue Force 3 uses aluminum tanks which are lighter to carry. Bigger tanks are available for a small fee. This combined with the higher salinity of the Red Sea means that you might need more weight than you normally would.
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Sample Itineraries
Ocean Lovers' itineraries focus on the north of the Red Sea. You can choose from reefs and wrecks around Ras Mohamed and Tiran, with or without visiting The Brothers Islands, or experience the most-exciting dive locations of The Brothers, Daedalus and Elphinstone.
- BDE (Brothers, Daedalus & Elphinstone): Visits the best dive locations in the national marine parks of the Red Sea as well as local reefs.
- North & Brothers: Visits the reefs and wrecks of the northern Red Sea and The Brothers Islands.
- North & Tiran: Visits the reefs and wrecks of the northern Red Sea plus the Straits of Tiran. This itinerary involves less sailing and therefore the opportunity of some more dives and is better for less-expereinced divers.
The itineraries below are the most-common for each trip, but these can sometimes be changed for a number of reasons. Small changes are made due to weather & sea conditions, special marine life sightings, overcrowded dive sites, local-authorities' instructions, and the needs & requests of the paying guests.
Dive Sites Visited
I did the Blue Force 3 top Red Sea itinerary. This itinerary covers the North of the Red Sea and allowed me to discover some of the best dive sites in the world. The trip was in June and I expected to feel really warm. Many people had warned me that it was too hot to go to Egypt in June. I shouldn’t have worried. The water in most dive sites was around 25 or 26 degrees which I sometimes found a bit cold.
Three dives were offered this day. Giannis D wreck is in the channel of Gubal. It was launched in 1969 as the Shoyo Maru and sank in 1983. Starting at a depth of 10 meters and goes down to 25 meters, the entry into the water was a bit of an adventure as there were big waves near the wreck and the tender boat was rocking the waves. It was much quieter once underwater. Visibility was awesome. How awe-inspiring to see how such a huge boat could have been destroyed by the ocean and reminds us of the power of the sea. There are many glass fishes in the boat. After the wreck, we continued along with a sloping coral garden. A turtle was swimming and was kind enough to pose for our photos.
The main course for today is the Thistlegorm wreck dive site. One of the most famous wrecks in the world. Thislegorm means the blue flower from Scotland. The boat was built in 1940 and sank in 1941 on its first trip. The wreck is still full of weapons, 2 locomotives, soldiers’ uniforms, tanks, cars, motorbikes, and even trucks. The content of the boat is very impressive to see. The wreck is full of scorpionfishes, crocodile fishes, and batfishes. We did a night dive on the Thistlegorm wreck. It was fantastic but also a bit spooky to enter inside the boat during the night. Make sure you have a good torch! Diving this huge wreck at night is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. The Thistlegorm wreck is so big and impressive that it was worth spending more time there and doing 2 more dives. We did a total of 4 dives there.
We dove the Shark and Yolanda reef sites. The site is composed of 3 submerged pinnacles. We started the dive on the anemone city side. There are over 300 anemones in anemone city. Don’t forget to look in the blue when you cross between reefs. The deep wall attracts big pelagics. We saw a few huge tunas and schools of Jacks. The wall is pretty with many giant gorgonians and soft corals. A huge school of snappers was waiting for us near Shark reef. The school of unicorn fishes was magical. After the Yolanda reef, is an old wreck called Yolanda at 17 meters. The boat was transporting toilets so it makes for a surreal scenario. Hundreds of broken toilets are littering the bottom of the reef. The shallower coral garden is very pretty with thousands of colorful red anthias fishes. What a dive!
Big brother island is a rock in the middle of the Red Sea. There is a lighthouse and a few decrepit buildings amongst the arid landscape. After our security briefing, we were ready for them but unfortunately, they didn’t come to see us. We saw a small black tip and a white tip reef shark. We dove big brother twice but the biggest shark we saw was a grey reef. The positive of this is that we got a bit of time to look at the wall that was spectacular and covered with pink, yellow, and green soft corals.
Small brother was our last dive for the day. There were no sharks. Current can be weird. The positive point is that it forced me to stay close to the wall. And what a wall it was. The walls get much nicer in the shallow area around 8-15 meters. There is an incredible anemone city.
Transportation and Logistics
After a 10 minutes drive, we entered the Hurghada Marina and got dropped straight in front of the boat. Someone took care of our luggage while we were escorted to the living room.
Max. Ocean Lovers guests are collected free of charge from Hurghada airport or local hotels withing 10km. during the afternoon or evening of the first day of the trip.
The last dive of the trip was nearer Hurghada. Our hotel was the Marriott Hurghada. The Blueforce team organized all the transfers from the boat to the hotel and also from the hotel to the airport on the next day. It was all flawlessly organized.
Diver Prices Overview 2025 / 2026
Here's a glimpse into the pricing for various itineraries on the MY Ocean Lovers:
| Destinations | Duration | Twin Bed Lower Deck | Twin Bed Sun Deck | Sun Deck Double | Upper Deck Double | Panorama Suite |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daedalus Reef, Rocky Island, Zabargad Island, St. John's, Fury Shoal, Elphinstone Reef | 8D / 7N | 1,787 USD | 1,787 USD | 1,787 USD | 1,643 USD | 1,851 USD |
| Elphinstone Reef, The Brothers, Daedalus Reef | 8D / 7N | 1,620 USD | 1,620 USD | 1,620 USD | 1,475 USD | 1,683 USD |
| Northern Wrecks & Reefs (Suez Gulf), Ras Mohammed, Tiran Straits | 8D / 7N | 1,417 USD | 1,417 USD | 1,417 USD | 1,273 USD | 1,481 USD |
| The Brothers, Ras Mohammed, Tiran Straits, Northern Wrecks & Reefs (Suez Gulf), Safaga Reefs, Salem Express | 8D / 7N | 1,591 USD | 1,591 USD | 1,591 USD | 1,446 USD | 1,654 USD |
Thistlegorm wreck Red Sea scuba dive plans
Final Thoughts
The Blue force 3 is a new and splendid ship, perfect for diving the Red Sea. It is one of the best live-aboard boats in Egypt. The organization is flawless, the food is great and the team is helpful and smiling. The Top Red Sea itinerary allows you to sample the best dive sites in Egypt. The wreck of Thistlegorm and the national parks of Ras Mohamed and brothers.
Finally, no trip to Egypt is complete without a visit to the Pyramids and Luxor.
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tags: #Egypt
