Scuba Diving Charters in Long Beach, CA, Built for Certified Divers
This boat is for divers who already hold certification. You get the vessel, the deck space, the captain, and surface cover for as long as you are down. What you do not get is an instructor, rental equipment or a fixed itinerary, because none of those are what you came for. It exists for the group whose only missing piece is the boat.
Get in touch
What Is a Private Dive Charter and Why Do Certified Divers Need One?
A private dive charter is a boat, a captain and a block of time that belong to your group alone. You decide where to dive, how many dives to do, how long to sit out your surface interval and when to head back. Nobody else is aboard, and the schedule is not built around a roster of twenty strangers.
This matters because Southern California hides most of its best diving offshore. What we do bring is a captain who stays aboard and on watch for the whole dive, local knowledge of how these waters behave through the season, and a published rate of $1,400 for four hours with fuel included. Our five star ratings on Google, Yelp and Boatsetter are public on all three platforms if you want to check us before booking.
Our Services
Dive charters are one of five services we run from the same boat. If your group has non divers or you want a different kind of day on the water, these are the alternatives.
Wakesurfing Charters
Towed watersports, including wakesurfing, wakeboarding, waterskiing and tubing, with boards and ropes provided. Worth knowing if your dive group has partners or children who would rather ride than descend.
Scuba Diving Charters
A private dive platform for certified divers. You keep control of the dive plan and the sites, we hold position on the surface, keep the deck clear for kitting up, and stay on watch until every diver is back aboard and accounted for.
Boat Lessons
Boat handling instruction for people who want to operate a vessel themselves, covering docking, close quarters manoeuvring and reading conditions. This is boat training, not dive training, and it is popular with divers who have just bought their own boat.
Corporate Team Building Charters
Structured days on the water for companies, with invoicing, catering and a written weather contingency arranged in advance. Dive clubs and workplace groups sometimes book this format when the numbers get larger.
Private Boat
Charters
Occasion led bookings for birthdays, anniversaries and family days, where the point is the event rather than the activity. The boat stays the same, the plan for the day changes completely.
Benefits of Our Dive Charters
Your dive plan, not a published itinerary: You choose the sites, the depth profile, the number of dives and the length of the surface interval, instead of fitting yourself around a schedule built for a boat full of strangers.
You are only buying what you actually need: Certified divers with their own regulators, computers and exposure suits should not be paying for instruction or rental packages, so we sell the boat and the captain and leave the rest to you.
A captain who stays on watch, not in the water: The person running the boat is not diving, which means someone competent is always topside tracking your bubbles, watching traffic and ready to reposition or assist.
Small group means real deck space: Kitting up in a crowd is miserable, and a private charter means room to lay out gear, a clear path to the water and no queue when it is time to get in.
Honest advice about the day before you commit: Visibility here swings wildly between excellent and poor, and we will tell you plainly if the conditions or the swell make your planned site a bad idea rather than taking the booking anyway.
Choose Your Time on the Water
Enjoy a private boat experience with simple, all-inclusive pricing.
Work Process
Our Work Process
Tell us your dive plan
Call or text (562) 533-7635 with your date, how many divers, your certification levels and the sites you have in mind.
Sort tanks and gear before the day
Fills and rental kit come from a dive shop, not from us, so arrange those in advance.
Load, dive, and get counted back aboard
Arrive, load tanks and kit, and run your dives. The captain holds position.
Private Dive Boat Charters in Long Beach
The difference between a private dive boat charter and a scheduled trip is control. On a group boat the itinerary is set before you book, departure does not wait for you, and if you arrive without a buddy you get paired with whoever is available. None of that is unreasonable, because a business carrying twenty divers has to run to a timetable.
A private charter removes the timetable. If your group wants one long dive rather than two short ones, that is your call. If everyone surfaces early because the visibility is disappointing, you can move and try somewhere else. Buddy pairs are the ones you arrived with, which matters more than people admit, because diving with someone whose habits and air consumption you already know is simply safer.
Kelp Forest Diving off Long Beach and Catalina
Kelp is the reason most people dive this coast. Southern California kelp forests support giant black sea bass, sea lions, garibaldi, horn sharks and dense reef life, and swimming through a healthy stand of it is genuinely unlike diving anywhere warm. Catalina in particular is a classic, with the marine park at Casino Point, the wrecks scattered around the island, and sites such as Ship Rock and Farnsworth Bank that experienced divers keep coming back for.
Be realistic about the crossing. Catalina sits roughly two hours off the coast, and a genuine island dive day is a full day rather than an afternoon, so it needs the eight hour booking and settled conditions. We would rather tell you that before you book than have you discover it halfway across. For shorter charters we will point you towards closer structure and reef where the run out leaves more of your booking underwater.
Oil Rig Diving off Long Beach
The three diveable platforms off this coast are Eureka, Ellen and Elly, sitting in federal water roughly eight and a half miles offshore. Ellen and Elly are joined by a walkway and stand in around 260 feet of water. Eureka is deeper still, bottoming out near 720 feet. The steel legs run down into the dark covered in invertebrates, with sea lions on the surface and big schools of bait fish moving through the structure. Divers who have done it rate it among the best multilevel diving anywhere.
Because of that, rig diving needs a dedicated dive operation with a surface crew whose entire job is tracking divers relative to the propellers. Tell us if this is what you are after and we will be straight with you about whether our boat is the right one for it, or point you towards an operator set up specifically for platform trips. We would rather lose the booking than take you somewhere the boat is not configured to support.
Ready to Book a Private Dive Charter in Long Beach?
Send us your date, the number of divers, your certification levels and the sites you want to hit, and we will tell you straight whether the plan works for the boat and the season.
Four hours is $1,400 with the captain and fuel included. Tanks, fills and personal gear are arranged through your dive shop rather than through us.
Call: (562) 533-7635
Email: danliu10s@gmail.com
Address: 4900 Hazelnut Avenue Seal Beach 90740
Send A Message
About Us
Cobalt Charters runs private dive boat charters out of Seal Beach for certified divers across Long Beach and the Southern California coast. We provide the vessel, the captain, the fuel and the surface support, and we leave the dive plan to the people qualified to make it. Call or text (562) 533-7635 to check a date.
Areas We Are Serving
We run dive charters from Seal Beach along the coast in both directions, and the right launch point depends heavily on where you intend to dive. Distance eats into bottom time, so the harbour closest to your sites is usually the right answer even if it is not the closest to your house. Tell us the plan and we will suggest where to start from.
Dana Point sits furthest south and is the natural jumping off point towards the deeper southern water. Long Beach and San Pedro are the traditional departure points for anything heading out towards Catalina.