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Solomon PNG Master – Taka dive boat review
The 30 meters Solomon PNG Master is a liveaboard cruising around the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. The vessel was formerly known as the Taka. Indeed, the name of the boat now reveals it’s remote and fantastic destinations. Built in 2004, the vessel is now part of the world renowned Master fleet and offers scuba diving trips in the Solomon Islands and Papua year round.
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The cabins
The Solomon PNG Master can welcome up to 20 passengers on-board each voyage to Papua New Guinea or the Solomon Islands. Divers are hosted in 12 comfortable cabins of various layouts. First, there are 4 single cabins located on the lower deck which have shared bathrooms. Secondly, you will find 2 cabins that can be booked in double occupancy, but which display 4 bunk beds. You can use two bunks to sleep, and then remaining two for storage. Finally, you get 6 premium and deluxe rooms, which have double beds, and sometimes a twin berth as well. These cabins each have a private bathroom facility.
Visit this page to view prices & schedules for this boat.
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Solomon PNG Master’s on-board facilities
The vessel offers very spacious communal areas so everybody can have it’s own space. The main indoor room includes both the salon and the dining room, as pictured below. Plus, the outdoor decks are perfect for the sun lovers and to admire the view over the Solomon Islands. The second deck has a covered lounge were you can hang out. Finally, the very top deck is a massive solarium area filled with loungers. It’s definitely the premium unspoiled area where to take picture of Papua New Guinea.
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Vessel Layout
Like most Master liveaboards, the Solomon PNG offers modern technologies to insure a secure navigation throughout the cruise. The vessel can compare to it’s closest neighbor from the Master fleet, the Truk Master, which sails to Yap & Chuuk.
Scuba diving with the Solomon PNG Master
The Solomon PNG Master offers a very well equipped and spacious dive deck. Indeed, the deck included toilets, freshwater showers as well as separate rinse tanks for your toys. The 12 crew members, and mostly the diving crew, are experienced and will help you all along the cruise.
The Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea, are in the Coral Triangle. The biodiversity of the best scuba diving sites in the area will leave you with nothing but amazing memories.
Price starts at 3,275$US for 8 days/7 nights – various itineraries
Where does this liveaboard dive boat go?
Check out the fabulous places where this dive boat travels to.
Note: some destinations may not be listed below, please enquire for more details.
Solomon Islands
The diving in the Solomon Islands combine pristine diving conditions, lava tubes, coral reefs and remote WWII wrecks
- If you have been diving on board this liveaboard dive boat in Solomon Islands, please share your review and let us know what you thought. Please post your comments in the review section below, by doing so you will help fellow divers to plan their next diving trip
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Other Liveaboard Reviews in Solomon Islands
Amazing boat! The dive crew is… fantastic!!! Guardian angels, best friends, instructors, teachers, they’re everything at once! This was a stunning experience! We’ll be back! Thanks!
A trip of a lifetime. The most amazing boat, staff and dive sites. The attention to detail was outstanding, my husband and I enjoyed every second. We can’t wait to go back. Paradise in every respect
I have just returned from my 2nd trip with SIDE as the first trip was so great I had to come back! And I must say this trip was even more amazing than the first time round!
Diving
The diving is the best I have experienced in the world with crystal clear water and so much healthy and spectacular coral and fish life. The soft and hard corals are so healthy and beautiful and I saw very little coral bleaching. The abundance and variety of fish life was fantastic. On a 10 night trip, 9.5 days of diving, we managed to get 38 dives. We saw sharks on most dives, we estimate on this trip we saw 100+! More than 20 turtles, huge schools of barracuda, trevally, some huge tuna and some amazing schools of big bumperhead parratfish which were pretty cool. Add to this moray eels, squid, crayfish, octopus, crocodile fish, the list goes on… (I dont get super excited by nudibrach but others on the trip found these and heaps more of the macro amazing..) On top of this we also did a few WW2 wreck dives, with a really cool plane dive and a couple of wharf dives with so much interesting stuff to see, vehicles, barges, munitions etc.. And above the water on a few occasions pods of dolphins surfed the bow wave.
Accomodation- Liveaboard MV Taka
Life onboard the MV Taka is great with very comfortable, air conditioned cabins, big lounge/meals area, undercover mid deck to chill out on or upper deck to get some sun. The boat also has its own onboard desalination plant so I did enjoy a few long showers after dives!
Crew
The crew were so great at making our trip great! Special thanks to local crew members John, our amazing dive guide, can find absolutely anything! Diana for ensuring we were all treated like family and Zonnie just for making everyone smile with his huge grin and his dancing and singing!
Food
Food is great and there is sooo much of it! I would’ve liked a bit more local food. As a group we requested some local curries and the chef happily accomodated with a couple of great dishes.
Village Visit
On our trip we did 2 village visits which was a geat way to break up all of the diving we got done. Its a special experince as these communities have very little western influence and they really appreciate the interaction. This being our second trip we brought some small gifts to give to these communities to help with their schooling and also some balls and other things for the kids to play with.
I’m already looking for when I can get back to this amazing and pretty much untouched part of the world! Thank you SIDE and all the amazing crew onboard the MV Taka!
I booked the Solomon PNG Master 17 Months before the departure date. Six months before the trip I received an email from them that my reservation was canceled because of operational issues. It couldn’t be because of repairs, the trip was not cancelled, but they would not tell me why. I believe that they gave my cabin and/or the boat to someone else. I think it is terrible that my 50% deposit made no difference to them. We spent days setting up this trip which included additional travel. They did reimburse us for our nonrefundable expenses, but never apologized or offered us any other compensation.