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Ok, that is really out of date. Ops change quickly in various ways. I am sure that Salty Endeavors would make that poll today.

Probably time for another official poll then. Feel free to start one Dandy. You seem to have the time.
 
Probably time for another official poll then. Feel free to start one Dandy. You seem to have the time.
I doubt that a fair and accurate poll could be done from the members who visit the forum for that time period. And there are too many good ops to poll, aside from variety is services, etc.
 
I think that a shorter list would be ops that are skunks.


Edit to add: More correctly, ops that hire jerk DM's, e.g. DM's that show up smelling of booze.
Yep, met one.
 
We stayed at the Occidental 2 years ago at Christmas and dove with ProDive who has an on-site shop. 6 Days, 5 nights, arrived on XMAS day.

The occidental was very clean and well appointed and had sufficient quality and variety of food for the length of our stay between the main buffet and the ala-carte restuarants. Being able to walk up and grab a drink at the various bars is nice if you imbibe. The beach and pool were nice. The evening entertainment was not really our thing,but that is a very personal thing.

We did most of the paperwork/cards/medforms and put together a dive package in advance all via phone and email. Nothing but good things to to say about the patient, advance coordination. The occidental has an on-site location right at the base of the dock with rental equipment (we had all of our own so I can't comment on condition.)

They threw in a pool-refresher for my (then 14) dive-ambivalent son and due to the boat makeup gave us a private "DM" for our 2-tank trip. Our DM was the chief instructor for (at least) the Occidental. He was great with my son. He suggested doing PPB for my son, and my son was happy to do the dive work, but wanted no part of doing the bookwork on vacation. I offered to pay for the private instruction time, sans the book/card fees but was (to me) surprisingly, flatly, disappointingly refused by the dive coordinator. That kind of soured my son and he elected to stay on land.

With family time and the limited time, I only got one other 2-tank trip and and a night dive.

The 2-Tank trip was nice except for an insta-buddy who flitted around all over the place and forced me to chase and burn through my air. On the second dive I took a keep-her-in-sight and no more than 20ish seconds away at full speed. I dive with a self-reliant mindset (most of my dives are in a quarry where visibility can frequently result in buddy separation unless you are in immediate contact and always dive with a redundant airsource (19cuft pony on that trip which ProDive filled for free overnight before our first dive), but I take my responsibility as a buddy very seriously.
Dive times were effectively air-limited with Al80s. The DM would shoot a bag and send buddy-teams up for pickup as they aired-out.

The night dive (my first) was an awesome, but somewhat unsettling experience. It was amazing being in that environment at night. The unsettling part was that our boat had 2 groups of 8 with a DM for each group. The group was your "buddy", but the group tended to fan out in the drift to a point where, while you could see where each diver was, but not realistically identify them or if one was in distress. As our group was "parked" examining the creatures, the other group drifted right into and eventually through our group. I was left clueless as to which group was which as they separated since identifying the DM at any distance was impossible, but I guessed right, stayed parked, and ended up with my group. All-told, not so much a personal safety fear for me due to my redundant airsource and experience with multiple low-viz separations, but if that intermixing resulted with the group-structure changing in number, I would expect (hope) that that would result in an immediate cessation of the dive and lost-diver search by the DM. I am now a much more experienced night diver, with my night class completed, and subsequently having played clean-up/sweeper/safety-diver for a couple of night classes in < 5ft viz, so would be far less freaked by, and better prepared to manage a clear-water experience like I had.

Note: The ProDive boat goes back to the Allegro pier during the SI on 2-tank trips to exchange tanks.

If I were to go back and stay at the Occidental, I would probably dive a bit with ProDive for the convenience, but would be eager to give Aldora a try for the better bottom time.
Thank you for all the great details!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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