Whats normal on a dive boat?

[Wingy]

Certainly not the divers - normal does not encompasse paying money, paying more money for equipment that is cumbersome and fragile, paying more money to immerse yourself willingly in an environment incompatible with sustaining human life when you don't even have gills. Not normal

 

[outofofficebrb]

That's definitely not normal. I've been to about 20 liveaboards (Komodo, Raja Ampat, Socorro, Cocos, Galapagos, GBR, Palau, Red Sea, Maldives, Gulf of Mexico). Maximum divers is about 20, average about 16. 3-5 dives / day with surface interval about 2 hours.

I am under the impression the OP is referring to day boats and not liveaboards which are a bit different.

 

[Dan]

I am under the impression the OP is referring to day boats and not liveaboards which are a bit different.

Oops! My mind must have been on my next liveaboard trip plan, which is coming up soon.

The biggest day boat that I have been on is Spectre, The Spectre Dive Boat | Diving Santa Cruz Islands on Spectre Dive Boat which pretty big boat (85 foot long), capable of carrying 40 divers plus nine snorkelers or non-divers. There were only about 30 divers at the time. The diving is pretty shallow (30-40 feet depth). We did 3 (40-60 minute) dives with surface intervals between 60 to 90 minutes.

 

[Frosty]

Sorry guys to answer a bunch of questions all at once. 1) There was no tank "changeover" as such. pretty darn coll system.They topped up the tanks using multiple refill lines from the onboard tank. -VERY fast topups. -then ya just hook ya first stage back up. 2) 1 was max depth 20m -I wasn't keen on the profile so stuck to 12-15m max.2 was 12m. SI from 2-3 would have been 2 hours in fairness.3)dare I Swear?--Diving wasn't my main reason for being in Cairns -I was there to compete in the ironman race -so much as I hate cattleboats it was conveniently located a short shuffle from my hotel.

 

[Bob DBF]

The diving is pretty shallow (30-40 feet depth).

Make sure you have plenty of air in your BC when you do the stride off, or you could break an ankle.

When my daughter was living down there, we did a trip with them. There were two OW classes aboard that day during the week, my daughter said this was quite common along with newly certified divers, hence the depth and benign conditions. It was not my first choice, but there was a lot of life to look at underwater and the crew was professional and quite pleasant.


Bob

 

[Searcaigh]

Here off the east coast of UAE most dive boats are around 9m and rarely exceed 10 divers on the boat apart from the Al Boom boats which are larger and carry more divers.

LOBs up into Musandam use Dhows and one dive op (Barracuda) from Fujairah occasionally uses a dhow for day trips too, they are slow though and a tender is usually used to pick up the divers.

While it's nice to have a boat with few people we still have to remember that dive ops need to make money to pay for fuel, staff and maintenance etc.

Some of the dive ops here charge more than others and as a photographer I don't mind as long as they allow me to dive for at least 60 mins. The 50 min / 50 bar nonsense is not to my liking and I only dive with ops that fit my criteria.

 

[ofg-1]

Normal on a dive boat? Someone blowing chunks, someone forgetting their mask, people that forgot how to assemble their equipment, people with not enough weight, or too much weight, someone that jumps in and looses a mask, lousy buoyancy skills, self appointed authorities explaining what you are doing wrong, and generally, most people having a good time.

 

[Snoweman]

Normal on a dive boat? Someone blowing chunks, someone forgetting their mask, people that forgot how to assemble their equipment, people with not enough weight, or too much weight, someone that jumps in and looses a mask, lousy buoyancy skills, self appointed authorities explaining what you are doing wrong, and generally, most people having a good time.

Damn! I think you have dove with my buddies and me (they get sick, not me). I recently did a back roll off of a boat and realized I forgot my find as my feet were going over my head.

 

[Ana]

Reading this thread feels like reading a Stephen King book.... 50 divers on board? that's a whole lot of nope.

 

[mi000ke]

For me it's not the number of divers on the boat, but the number relative to the size of the boat. Here on Grand Cayman I regularly go with Red Sail whose boats take up to 24 divers - some of the larger boats on the island. The most I've experienced was 20, but even with a full boat we have more space and it feels much less crowded that the many 6 - 8 max boats I've gone with when they are full. And Red Sail breaks the groups up by skill level and gas (nitrox vs air) to where we usually have about 5 - 6 people per DM group - no larger and often smaller that the one group on the smaller boats - where we are limited by the least skilled divers. Regarding 10 min SI, I've never experienced that short an interval anywhere in the world, usually at least 45 min. But I dive nitrox to max my dive time just in case. And if I think SI will be short I might shallow up a bit on my first dive (which here on GC is almost always a deep wall dive - 100 ft/ 30 m) and stay closer to the top of the wall at about 15 - 18 m. I usually get 60-75 minutes on my second shallow (18 m ) dive (I try to go with dive ops that let us dive our gas/ndl limits not the dive op's rushed schedule) and I'd be pretty unhappy if a short SI limited by dive to half that.