gentlegiant
Contributor
My wife purchased us a dive trip to Jamaica for my birthday this year and after looking at a couple of books we decided to stay in Montego Bay. The flight down was 5 hours delayed, avoid Travel Express too, so we lost our spot with Resort Divers and had to go with the hotel's diveshop.
When we got to the dock in the am we saw that the boat we were going out on was their "Glass Bottomed" tour boat because the "real" dive boat was out for repairs. The ladder fromt he dock to the boat had broken off in the last storm so we had a 5ft drop into the boat. No real tank storage on the boat, just a 6-8" deep tray and the tanks clanged together the whole time until we put fins between them. Also, no entry/exit platform or dive ladder on the boat, just a pair of rickety (one of them broke on me) plywood platforms by the outboard. Out of 4 dives we had at least 6 leaky tanks and I ended up getting bad air. I had to have my reg 1st stage serviced after we returned and the contaminent appeared to be oil and other debris. I doubt if any of their tanks had dip tubes and they all need new o-rings.
The dives themselves were pretty good, nice sponges and corrals and many fish. All dives were guided with no room to do your own thing.
For your own safety please avoid this operation. I had to go on antibiotics after this trip due to the scratches I received when the plywood platform broke plus the bad air issue. I sent PADI a 24 item list of things that all could be life threatening and they have promised to investigate but who knows what will happen. I do not want to see anyone else have these sorts of problems.
When we got to the dock in the am we saw that the boat we were going out on was their "Glass Bottomed" tour boat because the "real" dive boat was out for repairs. The ladder fromt he dock to the boat had broken off in the last storm so we had a 5ft drop into the boat. No real tank storage on the boat, just a 6-8" deep tray and the tanks clanged together the whole time until we put fins between them. Also, no entry/exit platform or dive ladder on the boat, just a pair of rickety (one of them broke on me) plywood platforms by the outboard. Out of 4 dives we had at least 6 leaky tanks and I ended up getting bad air. I had to have my reg 1st stage serviced after we returned and the contaminent appeared to be oil and other debris. I doubt if any of their tanks had dip tubes and they all need new o-rings.
The dives themselves were pretty good, nice sponges and corrals and many fish. All dives were guided with no room to do your own thing.
For your own safety please avoid this operation. I had to go on antibiotics after this trip due to the scratches I received when the plywood platform broke plus the bad air issue. I sent PADI a 24 item list of things that all could be life threatening and they have promised to investigate but who knows what will happen. I do not want to see anyone else have these sorts of problems.
