Dive Boat Sinks in Pompano Beach

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Oh dear, what a monumental 'stuff up".
Nobody hurt, which is a plus.
 
That canned safety briefing on a couple of boats I go on about "if the vessel decides to become a homemade artificial reef" isn't going to sound quite the same now. Can't recall I've ever seen a stern tie used on a dive boat.

Glad everyone got off okay with nothing worse (for the passengers at least) than lost items and some shenanigans at the bar afterwards. For the former there's a reason I keep everything that's supposed to stay dry in a jumbo dry bag; for the latter, well ...

https://images.app.goo.gl/fSQrNjR56QPXWhfu9
 


A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

The 2 posts above wriiten by elgringoperdido explaining his experience during this incident have been copied and entered into the thread covering the same incident under Accidents and Incidents. Here's a link to that thread:

Safari Diver of Pompano Beach had a special weekend.
 
I posted a couple articles last night in a different thread, one of them says they backed over their anchor line another says they couldn't get the hook free and it caused them to sink...

Will be interesting to hear what happened.

Was it sfdhq that lost a boat in the Inlet? It's been years now.


Yes, yes it was. No comment.
 
Some people may remember that in 2020, Pompano Dive Center suddenly and unexpectedly lost their lease and had to go out of business. They were the primary tech diving operation in the area, leaving SFDH to pick up that part of the business. Like many people, I was loathe to go with them anyway because of their role in PDC losing their lease (SFDH moved into the space immediately), but I was also loathe to go with them because they did their tech dives from the Safari Diver, and I did not like that boat at all. So I did not do any more tech diving during my annual snowbird stay in Florida. I contented myself with shallow reef dives for the rest of my stay.

We did one dive with them and sat out the second because of safety concerns related to the Cpt, crew, and boat. We counted our selves lucky to get off the boat.
 
@elgringoperdido Thank you for posting your detailed account of the incident. So glad everyone got off safely and were rescued. Best of luck either getting your missing equipment back or getting a settlement from SFDH. My guess is that will not be easy.

I’ve actually never used SFDH. I’ve been booked with them before but were either blown out or canceled plans for one reason or another. I’ll now consider myself lucky!
 
Good morning. I have another anecdote to share from Pompano Beach. I just learned this morning at breakfast about my wife's unusually long trip to the bar above the dive shop.

It was a 20-minute walk from our condo to the dive shop. I have done it twice. Alternatively, it is a 4 or 5 minute drive. I have also made that drive multiple times. Either you take A1A (Ocean Blvd) south to Atlantic Blvd and turn right, or take 14th St. West to Riverside and turn left. Either way, it is 14 blocks south and two blocks west from our place to SFDH. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?

...

At the first stop after we were rescued, Deputy Beer pulled his boat in to a spot where we could fill in forms and file our county police reports. Eventually the place was swarming with USGS boats and county sherriff boats and eventually a few fishing boats which had found flotsam and kindly delivered docked as well. As a result there was no shortage of mobile phones for me to borrow. I tried to call my wife about eight times on three different phones, to let her know about the "dive", but each time I got the voicemail. (I learned later that she was taking a long relaxing walk along the beach.) I decided it was not the sort of thing I wanted to leave a message about so I just decided to try again later.

Eventually, at the bar, after a couple orders of fried calamari and a few beers, I tried again and reached her. My first question was, "did you bring your key to your car?" Luckily the answer was yes. I explained that the car was safely parked but that my key was in about 70 feet of Atlantic water. She called an Uber driver to take her from the condo to the shop.

She had taken the trouble to put the GPS on her phone showing the fastest (four-minute) route from the condo to the shop. As it turns out, the trip took nearly half an hour. The Uber driver kept insisting that her GPS was wrong, that the dive shop was on the other side of the intracoastal waterway, and that there were more than one riverside drives. (That last bit may be true for all I know.) She said that he stopped three different people to ask for directions, each time she showed him her phone again with the (correct) GPS directions. Eventually they arrived. That ride may have contributed to her mood at the bar. Her only child aboard a sinking boat and my sense of humor ("If anyone asks, he's 21") probably did the rest.

So the point of this post is cautionary. Anecdotal, perhaps, without Big Data, but in my experience not only are the drivers of personal cars and the drivers of dive boats people to be leery of when visiting Pompano Beach, but the Uber drivers are as well.

Now, I am being summoned to stop playing on the computer to help pack. Headed for home.

Cheers.
 
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