Divers Down watch out!

[dpaustex]

And...to continue....

Sometimes people get their OW card and assume they are ready for anything. Not by a long shot. But somewhere in all of this, they should be told they should start with a couple of easy dives. I don't think I'd put a wall dive in the easy category, especially if there was a current.

Nonetheless, there is too much "shove them out the door" by the certifying folks. An OW card is just a very, very basic START to things. Just like getting a driver's license doesn't qualify you to drive a race car, an OW card doesn't give you the skill set to do a wall dive in current.

Hopefully, both sides will listen a little better. All of us, as divers, need to dive within our skills. The rest of us, that are dive leaders, need to not fall into a routine on our dive briefings. Not saying who's fault it is, just saying better communication is a good start.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

And...to continue....

Sometimes people get their OW card and assume they are ready for anything. Not by a long shot. But somewhere in all of this, they should be told they should start with a couple of easy dives. I don't think I'd put a wall dive in the easy category, especially if there was a current.

It's the diving equivalent of sending a newly minted private pilot out the door thinking they can fly into bad weather (I research aviation safety, so how things go wrong and the mindsets that lead to accidents are my areas of expertise). Go look at the NTSB database and see how many crashes are due to spatial disorientation or "VFR into IMC" and you'll see why I think the training standards for both pilots and divers should be increase significantly.

Nonetheless, there is too much "shove them out the door" by the certifying folks.

And there is an excessive tendency to make new divers overly reliant on divemasters and their buddy to the point where self-reliance is almost a second thought. However, that being said, self-reliance needs to be counterbalanced with a clear and finite sense of what the limits are.

Hopefully, both sides will listen a little better. All of us, as divers, need to dive within our skills. The rest of us, that are dive leaders, need to not fall into a routine on our dive briefings. Not saying who's fault it is, just saying better communication is a good start.

Agreed. Complacency kills as often and as quickly as overconfidence (and insufficient confidence)

 

[-hh]

Having not been around for awhile, I came across this thread this morning. Read backwards for ~2 pages, then jumped to the First Post and read forward.

A couple of thoughts come to mind.

• This was a private charter. As such, the rules are different: when you're paying for the whole boat, it effectively becomes your responsibility as the Charter Organizer to perform certain functions.
  
  Two of these responsibilities of the Charter Organizer relate to diver skill levels: the task of "matching up" divers of different skill levels, and the divesite selection criteria. For this latter, what this means is that if the site was "Too Deep" for the Novices, the blame is on the organizer, not the operator, unless the operator disregarded the Charter Organizer's instructions and went to a deep site after being told to go to a shallow(er) one.

• This was a private charter, Part II. Similarly, much of the "tourist" boilerplate of pre-dive briefings are generally expected to go by the wayside. Generally, this happens because the Charter Oganizer decides what is adequate, and either does the briefings themself, asks the Operator to do their standard, or the Charter Organizer skips it because their group consists of sufficiently experienced divers such that the majority of the boilerplate is unnecessary. Bottom line is that it is decided by the Charter Organizer.

• Operator disorganization. It does appear (at least superficially) that the Dive Op had some 'quality' problems with getting gear ready and a dead diveboat battery. While a certain degree of "things break" is always understandable, what we don't know if the Dive Op does this poorly every day, which is what would be the real concern (My apologies if I overlooked a response from the Dive Op that might have addressed this). To a certain degree, I have to say "Statistical Sample of N=1" and note it, but not necessarily put too much weight on it.

• Customer Expectations We were all young and ignorant once, and we've all been burned by lousy products and/or vendors. In time, one learns to choose your fights. Personally, I would have been more than just a bit irritated in losing 2 hours of only a 4 hour port call kicking around on dock and probably would have said so...but it depends: we all have to roll with the punches and if I saw that the operator was working hard and making a sincere effort - - or if my own crew was at fault for some of the problems - - it would be unfair to pin anyone with all the blame.

JMO,

-hh

 

[Unibrook]

Congrats! You got what I call the Grand Cayman Experience! (just kidding...it sucks, I know. I won't be going there again under circumstances like yours. If you speak to enough people, you will hear that diving on GC can be very good, but you need to put in more effort and time to get to know the dive sites, dive ops etc)

Sorry, I couldn't resist feeding you this pic:
http://s380.photobucket.com/albums/...yman/?action=view&current=GrCaycruiseship.jpg

 

[DropkickMurphy]

Congrats! You got what I call the Grand Cayman Experience! (just kidding...it sucks, I know. I won't be going there again)

Sorry, I couldn't resist feeding you this pic:
Little Cayman :: Cruise ship at Grand Cayman picture by stinkdyr - Photobucket

It could be a LOT worse. The problems you are maligning GC for are the same ones that any easily accessible (read as "affordable for someone who isn't a doctor or a lawyer or willing to sell organs on the black market") dive site is going to have. Granted, I'm not a fan of the cruise ship crowd myself, but then again I've seen far worse at Gilboa and some of the dive locales in Florida that I've been to. Personally I would take the cruise ship tourists over the normal crowd at Gilboa. At least there are things to see in the Caymans....and if you don't want a crowd, stick to shore diving....there's no shortage of places to do it.

 

[divesergeant]

I think that Grand Cayman can still provide world class diving experiences. Sure, you need to check out the dive op before you go, but we do that with any dive op anywhere. We try to check out reviews from standpoints of group size, dive boat setup, safety, etc.

There definitely are some dive ops on GCM who seemingly will run cattle boats and fill them with as many head of divers as they can. We experienced this years ago.

Other dive ops run smaller groups and cater to stay-over divers who might be more up-to-date on their skills.

So, while I can understand unibrook's feelings (we booked a trip on a cattle boat on our first GCM trip, never again!) I have to stress that there is great diving to be had with just a little home-work. As for the picture of the cruise ship and continuing on to one of the sister islands, I'm with you on that. We truly cherish our Cayman Brac memories even though we couldn't dive for three days due to remnants of a hurricane!



Dropkick Murphy,

We've been to Gilboa; we feell your pain!

DS

 

[DropkickMurphy]

I think that Grand Cayman can still provide world class diving experiences. Sure, you need to check out the dive op before you go, but we do that with any dive op anywhere. We try to check out reviews from standpoints of group size, dive boat setup, safety, etc.

There definitely are some dive ops on GCM who seemingly will run cattle boats and fill them with as many head of divers as they can. We experienced this years ago.

Other dive ops run smaller groups and cater to stay-over divers who might be more up-to-date on their skills.

So, while I can understand unibrook's feelings (we booked a trip on a cattle boat on our first GCM trip, never again!) I have to stress that there is great diving to be had with just a little home-work. As for the picture of the cruise ship and continuing on to one of the sister islands, I'm with you on that. We truly cherish our Cayman Brac memories even though we couldn't dive for three days due to remnants of a hurricane!



Dropkick Murphy,

We've been to Gilboa; we feell your pain!

DS

Any specific advice for those who are planning trips? Who had the cattle boat?

 

[dpaustex]

I guess everyone has a bad day. I was in GC this week, and dove with a differnt dive outfit, who I was very pleased with. My friends had been with Diver's Down for 5 times, and dove with the folks I went with (who would dive the North Side).

To be fair, we visited Diver's Down shop on my last day in town, just to look for a shirt. I was the only person in the shop (with my friends sitting down near the desk), and could not get any help in looking for a shirt!!! My friends relayed to the shop employee the generally unhelpfull responses I had gotten from Diver's Down, when trying to find a dive operator. The girl feigned ignorance. I told them they had just lost about $1000 worth of business the past 3 days because we dove with someone else. Based on her indifference, I am wondering if customer service is in short supply on this island???

I guess everyone has a bad day, but I was generally treated rudely or with great indifference from 2 of the dive oeprations near the cruise ship docks, but was treated very, very nicely by operations not stationed there. I was happy with Deep Blue Divers, as well as the shore operation of SunDown Divers (shore diving at Cracked Conch).

 

[Jamie9]

Sorry to resurrect an old post, but found this while browsing around. While I haven't read all 9 pages of stuff I wanted to make sure there's a positive comment here towards Diver's Down. I recently did my AOW with Diver's Down, mostly under the excellent teaching of Jenny, whom the OP was bashing. She did a fantastic job, gave great instruction and dealt in a very professional manner with any blip that popped up (in 4 days of diving there are bound to be unforeseen circumstances). I would happily go back and dive with Jenny/Diver's Down again.

 

[Nylorac]

Having not been around for awhile, I came across this thread this morning. Read backwards for ~2 pages, then jumped to the First Post and read forward.

A couple of thoughts come to mind.

• This was a private charter. As such, the rules are different: when you're paying for the whole boat, it effectively becomes your responsibility as the Charter Organizer to perform certain functions.
  
  Two of these responsibilities of the Charter Organizer relate to diver skill levels: the task of "matching up" divers of different skill levels, and the divesite selection criteria. For this latter, what this means is that if the site was "Too Deep" for the Novices, the blame is on the organizer, not the operator, unless the operator disregarded the Charter Organizer's instructions and went to a deep site after being told to go to a shallow(er) one.

• This was a private charter, Part II. Similarly, much of the "tourist" boilerplate of pre-dive briefings are generally expected to go by the wayside. Generally, this happens because the Charter Oganizer decides what is adequate, and either does the briefings themself, asks the Operator to do their standard, or the Charter Organizer skips it because their group consists of sufficiently experienced divers such that the majority of the boilerplate is unnecessary. Bottom line is that it is decided by the Charter Organizer.

• Operator disorganization. It does appear (at least superficially) that the Dive Op had some 'quality' problems with getting gear ready and a dead diveboat battery. While a certain degree of "things break" is always understandable, what we don't know if the Dive Op does this poorly every day, which is what would be the real concern (My apologies if I overlooked a response from the Dive Op that might have addressed this). To a certain degree, I have to say "Statistical Sample of N=1" and note it, but not necessarily put too much weight on it.

• Customer Expectations We were all young and ignorant once, and we've all been burned by lousy products and/or vendors. In time, one learns to choose your fights. Personally, I would have been more than just a bit irritated in losing 2 hours of only a 4 hour port call kicking around on dock and probably would have said so...but it depends: we all have to roll with the punches and if I saw that the operator was working hard and making a sincere effort - - or if my own crew was at fault for some of the problems - - it would be unfair to pin anyone with all the blame.

JMO,

-hh

I was thinking the same thing - this group decided to hire a charter rather than "gamble" on the cruise ship cattle boat experience - I think they have a right to expect a somewhat higher standard and level of service on a charter. Their level of inexperience on a chartered trip really should have been taken into consideration by the Op prior to the dives. While we all have to be responsible for ourselves that does not absolve the Op from some responsibility. Everyone starts out new and to say the Op has no responsibility for a new diver because they have a C card seems wrong. Maybe I was just lucky starting out but my inital experiences were wonderful - due entirelyto great dive Ops (my local dive shop Rex and Blue Angel in Cozumel-to name names!).