Saba - be careful

[fatherandsondiver]

Two last points to set the record straight, as a lot has been said here:

1) Padi does not set limits for 12-14 yr old divers. From their website: "Junior Open Water Divers ages 10-11 years old must dive with a PADI Professional or certified parent/guardian. Dives must not exceed 12 metres /40 feet. Junior Open Water Divers ages 12-14 years old must dive with a certified adult." There is no limit set for 12-14. Here is the link: Kids Junior Scuba Diving Open Water, Rescue and Master Diver Courses - PADI Scuba Diving Training Organization

2) My point with this thread is not to justify what I do with my son. That is my business, and while people are welcome to give their points of view, that is all they are. I was not trying to open a debate about diving practice.

A dive shop, however, should not invite me to their island and to their boat promising to do something they won't do. I was crystal clear with them upfront, before I came to Saba, that I was with a 12 year old and that I wanted to dive at 100 feet. I asked very clearly "will this be a problem, as I had a problem in the past". They said NO PROBLEM, PLEASE COME. At their invitation, I flew to Saba for a day with one and only one purpose in mind (you may disagree with my intensions, but that is not the point), to dive deep with my son. The shop then took my money and drove me to their boat. It was only when my ONLY alternative was to turn back and fly back to Anguilla (and eat the $1000 of travel costs, plus my time) when they raised an issue about my son's age. The issue, as communicated, had nothing to do with weather - just his age. As I result I made this posting and started this thread to question the dive shop's (Scout's Place, Saba Divers) business practice. I do not question their policy on 12 year old divers, by the way, it is their business and their neck on the line. I question the fact that they invited me to the island and took my money under false pretenses, and then were less than apologetic about it.

Call me a monster for wanting to dive with my son, but don't condone the dive shop's bait and switch. I was out a day and $1000 before they raised an issue that I had put on the table by email 30 days before.

 

[Walter]

Call me a monster for wanting to dive with my son, but don't condone the dive shop's bait and switch.

Bait and switch is wrong. I made that point very early in the thread. You are not a monster for wanting to dive with your son. You are not even a monster for being unaware of the potential dangers of deep diving on a child's development. OTOH, I seriously question your judgement for not staying with your son while you were diving with him.

In the end, we did three dives, but two were shallow and on the deep one, XXXX needed to stay at 60 feet or so and just watch me at the reef - I felt terrible about it.

OTOH, everyone makes mistakes. How you plan to dive with your son now that you know the potential risks and now that you realize you screwed up by leaving him when you were diving "with him" is more of a determining factor of what people may think of you than mistakes you've made out of ignorance. Go forth and sin no more.

 

[deeper thoughts]

Wow leaving your buddy is pretty bad

 

[fatherandsondiver]

Again, to set record straight. The line above was from email to Scouts Place ahead of time and referred to my trip to Saba the prior year when my son was 11. For the dive I described, my son was not my buddy. I was paired with another person for the deep dive and the owner of the dive shop, who was very nice, worked with my son on skills at 40-60'. I did not, and would not, abandon my son during a dive. I would, if appropriate, let my son come up with a dive master if he were low on air at the end of a dive.

 

[Walter]

I'm glad to hear it. Thanks for setting the record straight.

 

[scooter6]

Hey guys. Mr. "fatherandsondiver" is just some rich SOB from New York City! Not worth trying to reason with. He'll never omit he is wrong. Don't waste your time.
Glad your Giants got wasted in the playoffs!

 

[morecowbells]

You could have requested to be let off the boat or you could have sat on the boat and refused their service. Then and only then would the credit card have a reason to dispute the charge. Instead you got your feet wet and used Saba Divers service. This remindes me of my days working in a restaurant. You would get customers who complain about the chicken-it is over cooked, the grouper-it tasted fishy, the beef-it was well done-yet they polished off their plate and aired their greivances after the fact in hopes of getting compensated. All of us on this forum have at one time in our lives been given less than par service. But despite that fact(i.e. recent incident with a rude cab driver)I pay up. It is time to move on and consider it a life lesson. I must say that I am impressed with the extreme restraint shown by Wolfgang and Saba Divers after reading all this slanderous misinformation.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

If there was any bait and switch it was on the PADI website you linked to. Here is the standard from page 10 of the PADI instructor manual :

Do not plan or conduct any training dives for 12-14 year old Junior
Divers in excess of 21 metres/70 feet, nor any dives for 10-11 year old
divers deeper than 12 metres/40 feet.

This is accepted to mean that any PADI leader MAY NOT take a junior diver below the maximum training limits as expressed in the standards. So for you to say that PADI has no limits for 12-14 yr olds is out and out wrong. In addition the 70 foot limit is for JUNIOR ADVANCED divers.I have never heard of a PADI Instructor taking a JR OW student deeper than 60 feet. So one of two things happened here. Either the instructor who certified your son screwed up by not making clear to him and you what his depth limit was or you chose to ignore the information for your own reasons. Before you make a statement like that you better check your facts. Personally I cannot believe the instructor made that serious of an error. Had you taken the time to call your son's instructor I'd be willing to bet you would not have started this whole thing. And if you really wanted to dive with your son that bad you'd have accepted his depth limit as your own. One of the rules is that you dive to the ability and limits of the least experienced or lowest certification of the team or someone sits the dive out. Instead you have taken what could have been a great memory and turned it into Dad left me with a stranger to go deep.

 

[ScubaSteve]

Hey guys. Mr. "fatherandsondiver" is just some rich SOB from New York City! Not worth trying to reason with. He'll never omit he is wrong. Don't waste your time.
Glad your Giants got wasted in the playoffs!

You have jumped top a pretty big conclusion from a couple paragraphs. You think you know it all and pretty quickly for 3 posts.....perhaps you are an alias identity. Bottom line is, I completely disagree with your statement calling the OP a "some rich SOB" but I do agree that it appears as though there will be no seeing eye to eye with many posters and the OP.

And by the way, it is admit, not omit. Thanks for adding value to the thread.

 

[anzac65]

...... On the physical risk, is a 12 year old more susceptible to permanent injury from deep dives, I do not know.......

...........You don't know eh ? Well, DON'T TAKE HIM THEN.