Virgin Gorda Packing Review

We tell our friends about our packing lists for traveling with carry-on luggage, but the one thing we do not often share is the quantity of each item we take with us. In this blog, I am going to review the clothing that we packed for our scuba diving trip to Virgin Gorda, BVI with a three day stop in South Beach, Florida.

For a scuba dive trip, we usually divide clothes into “day” clothes and “evening” clothes. Most of the day is spent in swimsuits and dive shirts. We often take shorts and T-shirts to wear in the day that can get wet and salty. The evening clothes are “dressier” and generally do not get dirty or sweaty.

Murray’s Airplane Clothes

  • sandals
  • socks
  • cotton pants
  • underwear
  • short sleeved wool shirt
  • jacket as a warm layer

Murray’s Packed Clothes

  • 1 pair cotton shorts
  • 1 cotton T-shirt
  • 1 golf shirt
  • 1 shirt to wear on dive boat
  • 1 pair underwear
  • 1 pair flips flops
  • 1 sun hat
  • 1 swim suit

Murray’s Clothing Review

The cotton pants were not worn except to travel in. Pants, wool shirt and jacket could be substituted with shorts and lighter weight T-shirt and jacket/sweater/hoodie depending on the season when we leave Edmonton.

Murray mostly wore his swimsuit and dive shirt during the day. If he wore shorts in the day, they were the same ones he wore at night. No big deal for him. The cotton T-shirt  and same shorts were his evening attire.  The golf shirt was taken in case it was needed for a fancier restaurant outing. It was not worn. Two pair of underwear is just fine for a scuba trip as we spend most days in our swim suits. Everything else was well worn.

In South Beach, Murray wore his shorts and cotton T-shirt most days. I washed the shirt out once while we were there to refresh it.

mur

Debbie’s Airplane Clothes

  • sandals
  • socks
  • technical pants
  • underwear
  • bra
  • short sleeved wool T-shirt
  • long sleeved dive shirt
  • down sweater
  • toque

Debbie’s Packed Clothes

  • 1 pair technical shorts
  • 1 linen long sleeved shirt
  • 1 dressier technical T-shirt
  • 1 dressier top
  • 1 skirt
  • 1 sun dress
  • 1 pair underwear
  • 1 pair flip flops
  • 1 sun hat
  • 2 swimsuits
  • 1 small cloth purse

Debbie’s Clothing Review

Two things stand out right away. First, I wear more layers on airplanes as I get cold. The pants, down sweater, socks and toque only got used on travel days. Second, I take more clothes for a variety of outfits. It’s a fickle female thing and my clothes are much smaller than Murray’s so I can get away with it. (Murray notes that my bag was a few pounds overweight, but I am not convinced it was my clothing that put it over.)

My diving day clothes were a swim suit, dive shirt and shorts. I brought 2 swimsuits as I like to put on a dry suit if we go to a beach later in the afternoon. My “day” clothes were shorts and either the wool shirt or dressier tech shirt. The linen shirt ended up getting used to sop up spilled suntan lotion in the rental car so it got dirty and I couldn’t hand wash it out well enough, so I only wore it once.

My “evening” clothes were either my sun dress or my skirt and one of the dressier tops. I probably didn’t need to take the sun dress, but I just wanted to, so I did. I think I had too many evening clothes, but being with a group of friends causes me to be slightly vain and take more clothes. I honestly do not think it impacted my packing as most of my clothes fit on the very bottom of my bag and didn’t take up any space.

I brought a small purse for evening to carry my wallet and camera etc in. Next time I will bring a large one as I couldn’t get my sunglasses in the small one.

I did quick laundry in the shower almost everyday, rotating through underwear, dive shirt, shorts and swimsuits, just to keep things fresh.

In Miami, I wore shorts and a shirt during the day and my sundress at night. I did not mind wearing the same dress out for supper every night. Other than Murray, who is going to notice?

debIf you are wanting to travel with carry-on luggage only, try using the above as a guide for what to pack for a scuba diving trip. We are going on another scuba trip in July and we will fine tune our clothing even more.

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