This past weekend... and next?

Who's diving where next weekend (October 15/16)...?

Did the SS Minnow up outta WPB this last Saturday, and spent all daya Sunday w/ S. Florida Diving HQ. Phenominal dives on the Cptn Dan & Tracey - I'm going to love the wrecks down here...

SS Minnow - good parking, plesant crew. In-water DM, unique dive platform, no ladder. A submerged deck you pull youself onto - no effort at all. Minor battery problems delayed heading out, quick repairs done on the spot. Active Roll Call used. A+ operation.

S. Florida Diving - parking arrangement leaves alot to be desired. Basically pull up, find a place to park temp. while you unload your car, then go to the municipal lot which is $1/hour, find out both machines are not taking dollar bills, grab all your change, find out that its a real ***** to feed nickles and dimes. Give up hope, run around a find a free spot across the street, and sprint back to the boat. Then between AM and PM dives, haul your tanks the 300yrds from boat to car to swap out tanks, cuz you don't wanna loose the parking spot.... They run three boats, and it shows. The front office is a bit of a mad house, divers all over the place filling in paperwork, etc.. Imagine thats par for the course w/ potentially 70 divers showing up.
DM's dropped in to tie a mooring ball for the wrecks, reefs were drift, good captns and crews all around. Dave and Brian on the Aqua View definately had alot of 'personality' to add to the ride out....

Ran across plenty of bugs s/o really searching - I'm going to be getting license and gear this week.

Glad it turned out good for you, though!

South Florida Divers is probably the most fun, low-stress operator around (IMHO), but that parking situation is always a surprise to first-timers. It's always a good idea to show up a half-hour early... less stress, you can set your rig up without the crowd, etc.

As for the cattle-boat situation, yes it's the season. I can tell every morning because A1A is getting more and more difficult to navigate. There's an excitement in the air, however, because along with the snow-birds comes relief from the heat and... well, that's enough for me!

South Florida Divers does a pretty good job of dropping groups of divers so it's not such a cluster-$&@*. I can't say I've ever had a bad time with them on that big 'ol stable barge of theirs.

Try a shore dive with the locals at Lauderdale by the Sea. You'll have similar parking issues but once they show you the ropes you may come to prefer the freedom of shore diving ("we don't do sand" is their motto).

You can also put a trip together and post it under the TRIPS subforum if you're going to do another boat.

netmage - Friday afternoon looked great but we felt the north wind shift that evening and knew the weekend would be choppy. I watched South Florida Divers bouncing around out there and thought about you (the second dives are frequently right off of our condo's beach).

Scott (padipro) and I headed out Saturday morning to do the Rodeo 25... It was cold and wet, very choppy around the inlet. Once out on open ocean it wasn't that bad at all. Slight current down on the wreck, noticable on the surface, nothing you couldn't swim against when needed.

I stuck around for the afternoon dive to the Ancient Mariner, the sun finally came out right before the last dive. Not having a ton of people, they moved us over to one of the larger catamarans. A few 'out of towners' turned green and chucked into the wind. I tell ya - I'm batting 100% for loosing a fin when doing a giant stride off the Aqua View for wreck dives - its a god 3-4' drop. My string straps are just not cutting it from the height. The first time I had clear viz and was able to locate the fin on the bottom in no time. Yesterday viz wasn't so good, and I gave up looking, did the whole dive with one fin, then at the end gave it one last shot. Let the current carry me off the wreck and there it was. I need to plan better for this as I could no longer see the wreck.

Three things to happen before my next dive - tentatively schedueled for friday evening...
-Compass
-Reel
-Tighter Springs

-Tim

What can you tell this previous Illinois resident about costs on the ops mentioned?

Is the Minnow the boat that had the "lost diver" problem?

And, has "active roll call" solved that situation?

I also heard that short bottom times make this op a questionable value.

Your info is appreciated.

SS Minnow was $50, SFDHQ was $45+tax. Both prices BYOT....

Dunno of any 'lost diver' history w/ either op. Just made a note when they went through the manifest multiple times and thought it worthy of noting...

Short Bottom Times - well - going into the water, they made a point about setting different bottom times for air and nitrox divers. In reality - it came down to dive your computer to within no-deco limits...

Going out w/ the SS Minnow - they had an in-water DM, so when we hit ~55mins on the reef dive - he called it and we went up. I woulda called it at 60 out of courtesy to the other folks on the boat, I didn't feel slighted.

Congrats on the move Netmage, is this a permanent reloc?

Wilma welcomes you to Florida.....

Wilma says your dives this coming weekend are likely to be more exciting than your dives last weekend...

Wilma says get a bigger reel......

This Wilma stuff really blows...

:coke alert: