Ozwald
Contributor
Allright.....
So I had originally planned to dive with Geofish out of Playa but due to a rather crappy chain of events that landed a friend of mine in the hospital it kind of changed the schedule a bit. Due to timing and logistics my bud and I decided that we would go wit the "resort" dive op which was Seapro.
This could get long so I'll apologize now.
My buddy and I went and chatted with the booking dude at the Seapro office/hut. Talked about doing some diving and arranged for a deep and a shallow on one day and some cenote diving the next. Now this is where it starts. My bud is only "Naui Scuba Diver" cert'd, limited to 18 meters correct? The first dive was to 100 feet.
Here's where it gets good.
Another bud that was with us was interested in doing a "discover" scuba session. The guy said that they would take him to the pool and if he felt comfortable he could accompany us for the shallow afternoon dive. He felt comfy and on the boat he came for the "shallow" afternoon dive. Not only did he come aboard but so did 2 others. A middle aged fellow and a 12 year old boy.
So we arrive at the destination prepare to get in the water when my buddy leans over to me (the "never dove before buddy") and says "how do we get into the water?". Well i guess they never explained that he would be doing a "backward" roll into the ocean because once I told him how we were going to enter the water he looked shocked! Actually his expression was more like .....well you know. So once I heard this I asked him what exactly they were shown. 3 first timers in a pool for 10 minutes......that's it ! Anyhow I thought that as long as an instructor stayed with the 3 beginners everything should be okay. Boy was i wrong. The minute we got to the bottom it was apparent that all three were having issues with buoyancy which is to be expected. But, all three beginners were going in different directions and at one point I couldn't even see one of the dive-masters. Now while i was the more experienced out of my friends i am in no way trained to deal with this situation but I needed to stay with my bud for fear of him drifting away or to the surface or whatever. I must have gassed about 1800 psi trying to hold my buddy down and get him sorted out. At one point I caught the dive masters attention, signaled to him him to watch my friend. He looked right at me and put his hands in the air as if to say what?!?! then swam away.
After getting back on the boat and helping a few of the other divers up, the two hired hands were eating sunflower seeds and laughing at something, I had to contain myself. i was fully prepared toss all of these $#&*'s overboard. I waited till we got back to shore and had a very intimate chat with them.
The date of this dive was Monday, March 21st. I found out later that most operators cancelled their dives that day in the Playa area, the harbour was closed apparently. These clowns took out 3 very inexperienced divers on a 50 foot drift dive. Is there something wrong with this?
As it turns out the two divemasters were chasing around a rather cute young lady that had been diving with them for the past week or so, not admittedly of course.
I must say though that the next day at the cenotes was completely different. Awesome dive.
AQnyhow I dont know if this is the norm for these type of operations, I sure hope not. One thing you can be sure of is that I for one will never dive with a resort operation again.
So I had originally planned to dive with Geofish out of Playa but due to a rather crappy chain of events that landed a friend of mine in the hospital it kind of changed the schedule a bit. Due to timing and logistics my bud and I decided that we would go wit the "resort" dive op which was Seapro.
This could get long so I'll apologize now.
My buddy and I went and chatted with the booking dude at the Seapro office/hut. Talked about doing some diving and arranged for a deep and a shallow on one day and some cenote diving the next. Now this is where it starts. My bud is only "Naui Scuba Diver" cert'd, limited to 18 meters correct? The first dive was to 100 feet.
Here's where it gets good.
Another bud that was with us was interested in doing a "discover" scuba session. The guy said that they would take him to the pool and if he felt comfortable he could accompany us for the shallow afternoon dive. He felt comfy and on the boat he came for the "shallow" afternoon dive. Not only did he come aboard but so did 2 others. A middle aged fellow and a 12 year old boy.
So we arrive at the destination prepare to get in the water when my buddy leans over to me (the "never dove before buddy") and says "how do we get into the water?". Well i guess they never explained that he would be doing a "backward" roll into the ocean because once I told him how we were going to enter the water he looked shocked! Actually his expression was more like .....well you know. So once I heard this I asked him what exactly they were shown. 3 first timers in a pool for 10 minutes......that's it ! Anyhow I thought that as long as an instructor stayed with the 3 beginners everything should be okay. Boy was i wrong. The minute we got to the bottom it was apparent that all three were having issues with buoyancy which is to be expected. But, all three beginners were going in different directions and at one point I couldn't even see one of the dive-masters. Now while i was the more experienced out of my friends i am in no way trained to deal with this situation but I needed to stay with my bud for fear of him drifting away or to the surface or whatever. I must have gassed about 1800 psi trying to hold my buddy down and get him sorted out. At one point I caught the dive masters attention, signaled to him him to watch my friend. He looked right at me and put his hands in the air as if to say what?!?! then swam away.
After getting back on the boat and helping a few of the other divers up, the two hired hands were eating sunflower seeds and laughing at something, I had to contain myself. i was fully prepared toss all of these $#&*'s overboard. I waited till we got back to shore and had a very intimate chat with them.
The date of this dive was Monday, March 21st. I found out later that most operators cancelled their dives that day in the Playa area, the harbour was closed apparently. These clowns took out 3 very inexperienced divers on a 50 foot drift dive. Is there something wrong with this?
As it turns out the two divemasters were chasing around a rather cute young lady that had been diving with them for the past week or so, not admittedly of course.
I must say though that the next day at the cenotes was completely different. Awesome dive.
AQnyhow I dont know if this is the norm for these type of operations, I sure hope not. One thing you can be sure of is that I for one will never dive with a resort operation again.
