Whats the question?
Small Craft Exercise Caution with winds gusting over 20mph is not conducive to going 14 miles offshore, especially when i have been told that rough seas is not something the charter wants to deal with. I promise you I could use the money and both my Divemaster and I wanted to run. We were especially looking forward to the opportunity to impress a group of active scuba board members and the good press that could come of that. All of my marketing is either online or word of mouth and I felt like I needed to make this trip happen.
We only canceled the trip due to safety and comfort concerns. I would do it again and I am hardly the only person that canceled due to the rough weather on Saturday. Several other operators canceled their
inshore trips which would have been calmer than our offshore trip.
Please remember that when winds are from a northerly direction and you stand on a southerly facing beach the seas often look calm, but only because wave height is a function of wind speed and direction over open water.
So while it may be a good day for pontoon boats and other flat bottom bay boats to take a look at the South ends of the jetties, it gets progressively worse as you get further offshore and the wind has more fetch to push waves up higher and higher.
I do sincerely apologize about the inconvenience. I probably should have asked if you guys wanted to try an inshore trip instead, no doubt hugging the coast and going to the Strength and span 12 would have kept seas down to 3-4' given the wind was NE to ENE. If I had known your divers were still coming to Panama City regardless I would have pushed that. Its what we did with FSU's divers on Sunday, the winds were the same in both direction and speed and it was solid 4' seas with a very short period on the Strength and Span 12, a mere 4 miles offshore. Dive Locker had a boat out there as did PC Dive Center. I know Rambo canceled his afternoon trip and advised several others to do the same. PCDC's converted crew boats are larger and designed for rougher stuff than your average dive boat at that. However it was my understanding that many people had dove the inshore sites before and wanted to see something other than the Strength or Bart and a bridge span. Again my apologies, looking back on it I should have made sure that was an option everyone was aware of and not interested in.
My number is 850.624.2084 and I would be more than happy to answer any questions.
