Nekton boats may come back!!

[mike_s]

The cost of the flight to the Bahamas is not they main reason some people want to leave out of Florida. I met a number of divers who liked being able to drive to the port of embarkation. I really liked being able to bring all my underwater photo gear in nice heavy Pelican cases, not having to tell my wife she can't pack enough clothes and shoes for a month (I know- who needs freakin shoes on a liveaboard?), and not having to deal with a$$hole TSA. Some divers drove from as far away as Maryland and Ohio.

Exactly... that's kinda what I meant. I just didn't detail it as much as you did.



Most folks with $5k of camera gear prefer not to pack it as checked luggage.

 

[bleeb]

This is not meant to be at all sarcastic. For those that prefer leaving from Florida, assuming the dollar cost and total duration of the trip are roughly the same, how much dive time are you willing to sacrifice over an extra travel stage by a faster means of transport.

And a general question: Are there any boats or ferries that regularly make the run? Someone mentioned a charter plane. Would the liveaboard operator regularly chartering a boat from someone else who specializes in making the crossing be more cost effective? I'm thinking whether you make the crossing by plane, slow dive boat, or fast ferry, the customer is still directly or indirectly paying the costs.

 

[diverdoug1]

This is not meant to be at all sarcastic. For those that prefer leaving from Florida, assuming the dollar cost and total duration of the trip are roughly the same, how much dive time are you willing to sacrifice over an extra travel stage by a faster means of transport.

And a general question: Are there any boats or ferries that regularly make the run? Someone mentioned a charter plane. Would the liveaboard operator regularly chartering a boat from someone else who specializes in making the crossing be more cost effective? I'm thinking whether you make the crossing by plane, slow dive boat, or fast ferry, the customer is still directly or indirectly paying the costs.

To answer the first part of your question, in the good old days on the Nekton, we were still diving on the first morning we were on the boat, so no dive time lost. To answer your second question, there are no ferries running to Nassau (there used to be, but no more). Not having to go on an airplane is the main advantage for leaving out of Florida.

 

[mitsuguy]

I am a veteran of six trips and my wife has done 5.

We did Belize 3x and loved it every time but the air fare from Chicago was nearly as much as the boat last trip. I loved Northern Bahamas. I would not go back to St Croix as the best dive was the dock. Mona was one spectacular day (Monito) and 5 ordinary days.

St Croix is the worst place for a liveaboard... You could shore dive 75% of our sites - sure, they are nice to do from boat, but, to do it from a liveaboard is silly... The Rorqual missed the best sites here too (except the pier, of course)... Two of the old employees work for us now and I've heard some definite horror stories about the boat and its lack of maintenance - they thought the boat was going back to be worked on, instead they were all let go and the company dissolved...

 

[blibecap]

Let me clear up a few things as far as cost of having a boat leave out of the US. The cost of insurance is the same. Our cost for inspection & registration of the Aqua Cat, a boat of similar size to the Nekton run between $15,000 & $20,000 per year. I believe Nekton paid under $2,000 per year. The reason we moved the Blackbeard boats out of the US was the cost of getting out & in. This cost had increase to over $75,000 was continuing to go up. We had to send paperwork for each departure and arrival to USCG, Customs, Immigration & Agriculture. It took one employee to just comply with this. We also has to get a special hazardous waste dumster for anything that came off our boat since they considered our boats because they had been outside the US. We had to schedule a aggriculture officer to come to our boats to open the container. If they caught anyone putting something in the regular trash they hit us with a fine. This included someone walking onto the boats with a beer can and then departing & putting in a regular trash barrel. When we left we had over $30,000 of fines pending. We could appeal & did. We never lost one, but they a lot took time. There is also about $75/person taxes extra for trips leaving out of the US versus the Bahamas.

The Nekton itinerary out of Florida was great from spring to fall, but when the weather patterns changed they had problems. There was no place for them to dive or hide with the strong west winds you get in the winter. You would be wise to operate out of one spot year around. Most Caribbean liveaboards operate 49 to 50 trips per year. Nekton only average about 42. It is difficult to cover your fixed costs with that number of trips especially with what they charged.

Bruce

I am a 6 time Nekton DIVER and a 6 time Ohio DRIVER. The reason is photography equiptment, TSA ( transportation system aggravation ) , saving the cost of airfare as well as traveling with dive buddy's and not going to altitude after a week of diving. I would really prefer a USA port of travel.

 

[cappyjon431]

One issue that I am interested in (and I must profess I do not know the "right" answer) is what the boat/boats should do if they do not have a fully booked charter.

For all the negative press John Dixon received (no doubt some of it was warranted), he had a longstanding policy of going on charter regardless of how many people were booked for a certain trip. I worked on the boat when we had four, five, six guests at a time. John's policy was that if people reserved the trip, paid a deposit, allocated vacation time, he was going to send the boat out, even if that particular trip was going to lose money. His belief was that if you cancelled a trip due to low occupancy you would have many angry divers who would probably never re-book. If you go out with a very small group these divers would return time and time again.

I have seen a number of threads on SB where customers were angry with different liveaboards because of cancelled trips due to low occupancy. My question is, does it make sense to go out on a charter that is going to definitely lose money? From a financial perspective it sounds like a very bad idea, but from a customer service perspective I certainly understood his reasoning.

Since we are dealing in the realm of the theoretical (boats coming back), what is your opinion?

 

[tarponchik]

Sure, we'll be back. We did only one trip on Rorqual (Cay Sal in July'08) but we loved it. Just do not forget to bring Jordan on board, she's an awesome cook.

 

[vladimir]

Since we are dealing in the realm of the theoretical (boats coming back), what is your opinion?

I saw the Peter Hughes boat in Belize go out with 5 divers. I think it's the right thing to do, strictly from a business perspective. It depends on how much you're going to lose, though. At some point, you might cancel the trip and assuage the guests disappointment with future free trips, etc. You could also cut rates drastically before it gets to that point to try to fill the boat, but then you risk undermining your pricing power for future cruises.

 

[Damselfish]

I think trips should run even if they're going to lose money. Not only will you make the people on the canceled trip unhappy and probably lose them as customers - but other people are very likely to hear about it and you'll lose potential customers. You might gradually wind up with less business and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If a boat has a policy of doing this, I am leery of looking with them. If the boat is already fairly full and it seems safe I might, but I'd probably still have a nagging unhappiness about the policy. If there aren't many people booked yet and people have a way of knowing this, then you might wind up with everyone waiting for everyone else to book. I suppose you could keep them in the dark as to bookings, but I don't think that is a good idea either.

Maybe you could make it clear when the early people book, it's not guaranteed until X number - and offer a discount on the first X spaces to encourage booking. Might be a little risky, or might work great.
Or maybe you could not schedule charters every week during times of the year you expect fewer bookings in the hope of this helping fill the other trips. Or at some point remove a trip from the schedule if there's no bookings yet. This could backfire a little but not as bad as canceling charters.

If there are a really small number of customers, you could contact them, offering to pay any change fees and give them other incentives to get them on another charter. You could even see about arranging a trip on some other liveaboard for the same time and make up the difference, much as you probably don't want to send people to a competitor. (This actually happened to me once due to mechanical problems, though I am to this day slightly skeptical about the claim of mechanical problems.) But I think you really need to give the customer the choice. For many situations there's really no way of making people "whole" when you cancel a charter on them. Even if they don't have a financial loss, there may be an opportunity loss.

 

[DebbyDiver]

A North Carolina bicycling tour operator I've booked with a few times offers a really nice discount for booking 6 months ahead and a nice one for 3 months ahead. I've been on two of their trips and both were full (they only take 12 at a time but they were full).