silent running
Contributor
Comfortably Numb:Yes I am a little offended. I started this thread to get positive reaction to my trip in general and not get lectured about the negative attributes of the one boat over the other. I certainly regret using the word "comfortable" in one of my replies as this seemed to spark something deep inside of you to inform us of all the negatives involved in everything associated with the Star Dancer. According to you I could expect to 1) Be fed mediocre food prepared by inexperinced cooks, 2) Only dive the good dive sites if the water is flat calm, 3) Break a few fingers if there are any waves at all 4) Receive bad service from the crew because they probably don't care 5) Go knowing that my tour operator screwed me and knows nothing about what they are selling. Well Andy I hope your intentions weren't to deliberatly spoil our trip, or, that you don't have a hidden agenda here against the SD. All this information you have provided could have been placed in a different thread, possibly one that is seeking opinions of the experienced regulars here - BEFORE - a decision is made. Your zeal in "sticking up" for the owner/operators is commendable but, if not carefully filtered, could alienate some of those you are trying to help.
CN
Hello CN, if I actually meant some offense towards you, I would not have apologized. And I wish you had noticed that I offered plenty of encouragement along with my opinions, not all of which were critical. As for said opinions, there is no need to subscribe to all the worst case scenerios and assume they will happen to you.
Personally, I'm glad for any unfiltered opinions/info that I can get from public forums like this. This is one of the only places you can get this kind of information and then have a dialogue.
As for hidden agendas, what seems to be at issue here is my lack of restraint in expressing my views and perspective, not anything hinted at. Part of the reason I piped up was because your posts felt familiar to me both because I have read similar things from other first time PNG travelers and from my own experience the first time. As for your intention in starting this thread, I have started plenty of threads and always received some unsolicted opinions. Sometimes they were helpful, sometimes not. That is the nature of a public forum. If people stopped posting things that contradict one another, these forums would likely be reduced to a bunch of small glad-handing cliques. That would not be my idea of an interesting exchange of information.
Believe it or not, I was trying to be of some use. Having dived most of PNG in the last 5 years, I have been able to help out people more often than not with the information I collected at great cost. While I may have given you more info than you asked for, it was not all critical and some of it should be helpful to you. Also, I was not posting info only for you, there was another person who was trying to make a decision about their future liveaboard plans who might have gotten something out of it. Sorry I was not more helpful to you this time.-Andy