Dear buddies, I write as the SMY Ondina representative. Inmediately after being aware of the events that happen during this cruise I was in contact with the agents who brought the guests on board and had also a long thread of post in our facebook page which far from us deleting it we are leaving it in our wall to show that we have nothing to hide but accept there were some problems during that certain cruise which have been, or are being or already were solved during the cruise. You can see the posts at:
SMY Ondina - Dive Indonesia | Facebook .
Unfortunately the level of the language and accusations from Mr. Paul Morton have gone to a point which forced us to clarify some important points. Let me stress some of the points I mention to Mr. Morton in his communications and post.
The SMY Ondina is one of the pioneer boats in the Rajah Ampat area, we have collaborated actively in all mooring buoys campaigns, we have sponsored meetings of the Rajah Ampat authorities on board several times, we are active members of the Gahawishri organisation in Indonesia, we have already payed the annual fee for operating in Rajah Ampat, we actively collaborate in all conservation activities in Rajah Ampat and Komodo....etc.etc.
More than eleven years operating in the inner seas of Indonesia, the high percentage of repeaters we have and the nice comments in many blogs and forums are not from misled but from satisfied buddies who had a good time cruising and diving with the SMY Ondina.
I thank Mr. Morton for his complaints as they will force us to continue improving even harder for those future customers we will be committed with to provide a great diving holiday as we have done for so many years till now.
Like every other traditional wooden boat in the world we are not perfect and we sometimes have not perfect cruises. What we cannot cope with in any way is to allow that someone spreads plain lies or rumours or unfair guesses about us operating illegally which harm our operation and damage the image of our crew and Divemasters who worked hard to provide the best stay possible onboard to our guests or comments that let our repeaters as silly blokes who do not know what they do.
YES, we did have the two compressors broken during the cruise, something that has happened for the first time in ELEVEN years opertaing. We have already placed a brand new one on board and are repairing the other two. YES we had some bad air filling and we are solving it already with additional filters.(We have addressed all agencies and guests on that cruise to inform them that we will care for any service in their regulators and during the trip all guests were offered Free Nitrox) YES we refill our semirigid inflatable dinghies everyday, for many reasons long to explain here but everybody must know that we change the inflatable parts often and that we will do it again in the next coming dry dock. YES we did have leaks a couple of days in a couple of cabins but only due to terrible weather with rain and waves for several days. The cabins are equipped with an antileaking system that just was not enough this time but it has been on so many other cruises.
And now, NO we did not provide with bad food at all as the other guests who have posted could confirm, NO our DMs do not disappear when diving, NO we do not operate illegally, on the other hand, we stand first in protecting the beautiful reefs in Indonesia, NO we do not poorly maintain our boat, we are not a luxury boat but we provide a very good standard where we value homestay atmosphere and the traditional look in our boat.
There are excellent colleagues operating in Rajah Ampat and we all help us each other, that is why we solved the compressors problem we had in this cruise in just half a day. I hope you understand that this means something and tells something about us as a reputed operation.
We hope we can continue providing great diving experiences in those blessed areas we cover with our cruises to all buddies who decide to honour SMY Ondina in the future.
Best dives to all of you!
Enrique
SMY Ondina
BTW: we have just finished another cruise right after the one with "so many" problems and everything went fine and all our guests had a great time. Now we are heading to Cenderawasih bay, where we are going to be one the pioneers again, for diving with the amazing whalesharks in Nabire!
