Nekton boats may come back!!

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

he's right, we all did not love the Nekton boats. For all the reasons Matt said. And here are a couple more: wet floors in the cabins all the time, the crew had to put towels down and OMG the food! TERRIBLE, just TERRIBLE.

As for the % mix with nitrox, on the last cruise we did, Cayman, there were 3 people bent that week. One of the people took a couple chamber rides, came back and told us what the MD said: Everyone over 30 should always use Nitrox, so a 25% fill doesn't cut it.

I would never do another trip on Nekton. There are lots of really nice land based and yes, several liveaboards that are not super expensive.
 
As for the % mix with nitrox, on the last cruise we did, Cayman, there were 3 people bent that week. One of the people took a couple chamber rides, came back and told us what the MD said: Everyone over 30 should always use Nitrox, so a 25% fill doesn't cut it.

25% is still Nitrox. (for that matter, 21% is technically Nitrox, just not EAN. :wink: )

I agree the Nitrox % and availability reported on the Nekton seemed pretty lame. But that statement indicates to me that the MDs knowledge of Nitrox was rather limited. (I certainly wouldn't blame the 25% Nitrox for people getting bent, if that's the implication.)
 
I would like to say that on the trip I took our chef was excellent. However we were on the Pilot, not the Rorqual.

I also noticed on my way back into this post that the number of post from the OP has not gone up since my last visit.
 
Last edited:
25% is still Nitrox. (for that matter, 21% is technically Nitrox, just not EAN. :wink: )

I agree the Nitrox % and availability reported on the Nekton seemed pretty lame. But that statement indicates to me that the MDs knowledge of Nitrox was rather limited. (I certainly wouldn't blame the 25% Nitrox for people getting bent, if that's the implication.)


I agree.

I have heard stories of divers (on the Nekton's) completely disregarding their computers, and diving with their backups when they "bent" their primary computer because of not doing safety stops or decompression stops.

Perhaps the divers were bent because of these issues. Perhaps they wouldn't have been bent if they dove a higher percent of nitrox. Perhaps, even worse, they would have dove deeper than their MOD's had they dove higher percentages of nitrox.

Good chance I would be dead if I dove 32% nitrox all the time, as I spend a lot of time between 100 and 130 feet. High O2 exposures for sure, which is just as bad as being bent.

I honestly don't remember the last time I dove nitrox that wasn't on a nitrox training dive, as even with 4-5 dives in a day, I rarely push the limits of air even. FWIW, I am over 30...
 
he's right, we all did not love the Nekton boats. For all the reasons Matt said. And here are a couple more: wet floors in the cabins all the time, the crew had to put towels down and OMG the food! TERRIBLE, just TERRIBLE.

As for the % mix with nitrox, on the last cruise we did, Cayman, there were 3 people bent that week. One of the people took a couple chamber rides, came back and told us what the MD said: Everyone over 30 should always use Nitrox, so a 25% fill doesn't cut it.

I would never do another trip on Nekton. There are lots of really nice land based and yes, several liveaboards that are not super expensive.
No wet floors in my cabin. The food on my trip was not as good as on the Aqua Cat, but it was entirely acceptable. (The chef on the Aqua Cat was absolutely world class. But I got dreadfully sick because the ship bounces around like a cork, with its shallow draft for the Exumas.)

As for people getting bent because of the gas mixture, BULLS#!T!!! If you hold any sort of diving certification, you are supposed to understand no-deco limits. Nitrox does not make you less likely to get bent. It does give you more no-deco time, but also a shallower max depth, which you should understand if you are nitrox certified.

Every diver should understand the limits for the gas mixture s/he is breathing and dive accordingly. I happen to like nitrox 32, partly because I have zero interest in going deeper than 100 feet on scuba. (Maybe freediving, if I can manage it some day. :D ) But to say that every diver over 30 should be using nitrox just shows that that MD knows little about diving, because plenty of over-30 divers will want to go deeper than nitrox permits.

In short, those divers bear their own responsibility for failing to coming up within their no-deco limits for the gas being used, or for failing to understand deco and make their deco stops. 25% nitrox is chintzy and Nekton deserves criticism for not providing 32. But 25% nitrox is not why those divers got bent unless they assumed it was 32 and they failed to test their own tanks (which is a requirement for diving nitrox!!!)

Recreational scuba diving is fairly safe, but only if you follow the rules. And among those rules are: know your gas mixture, and know the limits of your gas mixture, and dive within those limits. One mixture is not safer than another. They just have different limits. There is nothing less safe about 25% nitrox or air, compared to 32%. Just different limits on times and depths.
 
25% nitrox is chintzy and Nekton deserves criticism for not providing 32. But 25% nitrox is not why those divers got bent unless they assumed it was 32 and they failed to test their own tanks (which is a requirement for diving nitrox!!!)

They used a membrane system, chances are it wasn't big enough to supply the compressor with enough O2 to get the correct final percentage...
 
I was on the second to the last Cay Sal Banks trip the Pilot went on. My cabin was comfortable and not wet. The food was great and plentiful. They had no nitrox, we only had air, but nobody got bent. In fact, my only complaint is that I went as a single and got matched up with the roommate from hell. OTOH, I paid a discounted rate to go and would not have felt that the trip was worth the full rack rate. However, I had a blast and I think I made 27 dives that week. I'd go again if they could clean up their act.
 
They used a membrane system, chances are it wasn't big enough to supply the compressor with enough O2 to get the correct final percentage...
And that's one reason why you test your own tank every dive, and you dive according to the mix you have, not the mix you expected or hoped for. BTW, they advertised something like 25 to 28% (don't remember exactly) (which is why I didn't bother paying for it) supposedly so that the MOD would be 130 feet, the same as the recreational limit. I figured they were just too cheap to provide a higher percentage. So I dived air and had a great time.

But it's really a moot point because if someone did bring one of these boats back, or build something similar, it would be easy enough to have a proper nitrox system.
 
Let us not forget that the Nekton Pilot ran from 1994 to 2001 without Nitrox being available. I came on the boat in 1995, saw thousands of divers complete 25-27 per week (diving on air only), and I can count on one hand the number of confirmed cases of DCS on the boat. While I left Nekton in 2005 and am not familiar with cases of DCS that occured after I left, I think it is a stretch to suggest that a low nitrox mix contributed to cases of DCS.
 
Let us not forget that the Nekton Pilot ran from 1994 to 2001 without Nitrox being available..


but today, I doubt most of the folks here would book a trip w/o nitrox as an option.

they'd choose another liveaboard that had it.

Last couple liveaboards I've been on, out of roughly 20 spots, only 1-2 people don't dive nitrox.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom