If some sites have sharp coral and you need booties or water shoes to get to them What do you do with them after you put your finns on as I have the type that require bare feet?
Can you just leave them on the shore or clip them to yourself Sorry for the dumb Question

George A

George, I guess most of us have the fins that you just slide your boots in. Those are sweet! you can walk in the water as far as you want with your water shoes on and then just slide into your fins and go. Its kind of hard to hang on to them if you are snorkling. Especially if you take a camara with you. Maybe we will bump into you the first week of Feb at the Divi. Kent

George,
I've seen divers who only have 'barefoot' fins attach their flip flops to their gear -- when they finish diving, they remove their fins, put on their flip flops and carefully climb over the iron shore.
For me, thick soled rubber booties are a must.

Mare

George, HARD SOLED dive boots are the best option but if you don't have them I would suggest you make some way to attach your shoes to your person. A nylon belt with a couple of brass clips on it would do, assuming your shoes have finger pulls or some other place to clip to. The only other suggestion is for you pick your sites carefully. A few that come to mind with reasonably sandy and/or easy entrances are Oil Slick Leap, 1000 steps, Old Blue, Witches Hut, Pink Beach and Windsock.

For me flip flops would not be a good option as my experience was that you needed protection up above your ankles. Maybe mine are bonier than most but it is easy for me to scrape my ankles on the dead coral and other stuff and even some skin a little higher. That's why I use hard soled booties.

I have seen postings here on BT that mention another method used by some snorkelers with only full foot fins. They wear their sandals/watershoes/booties when entering the water, put on their fins, and then throw their footwear onto the shore. I would think that the risk of theft is minimal since as a snorkeler you can kind of keep an eye on the shore. Hopefully you have a good enough throwing arm to actually hit the shore!

You can tuck them in your bathing suit or attach them to your weight belt while you snorkel.

That's what we do, leave them on the beach or tuck them. Actually it would be a blessing if someone stole them because we have a difficult time throwing anything away LOL!

We leave flip flops and a towel on the beach/up in the rocks - whatever suits the site. Never had problems. You have to pick your way into the water, but we never found a site where it couldn't be done.

However, if we're feeling flush this time, we may go to Bruce Bowker's good dive shop at the Carib Inn and splurge on booties and new fins. They're next on our list of snorkel gear improvements. (The last was bifocal prescription masks, and we're still fighting with our local dive shop to get that done right. The last improvement before the prescription masks was small dive hoods from Bruce, and they're fine.)

David