Hi Everyone,
First of all, thanks for the advice from everyone who wrote. Divecustomaquatics does look good but since I was there on my own the $700-$1000 price range for chartering a private boat was out of the question.
Here are my experiences:
I assumed I would be diving with Bahama Divers since they are located quite close to Paradise Island (10 min drive away) and Stuart Cove's is about 50 mins away. Plus, reading what sjspeck said above (as well as others on another site I posted on) I was not keen on the idea of diving with Stuart Cove's.
On arrival, I phoned Bahama Divers and asked about their 2-tank dive the following morning. They told me the first dive would be 30mins long and to about 80 ft and the second about 45 mins long. When I explained that I was an instructor and have my own computer and asked if there was any way I could stay down longer than 30 mins and go a bit deeper than 80 ft they said flat out no. I asked whether they had any reccomendations for more advanced divers (I HATE going for a 30 min dive) they said, "no, call Stuart Cove's". Wow, some business sense!!
So, I did. I called them and to my surprise, they were very accomodating. I decided to give them a try and booked their 2-tank morning dive for the following day. While it is true that they are a big, busy operation, they also have a well set up shop and I found their staff to be friendly, helpful and flexible. When I told the instructor/DM on my boat that I was an instructor, she said as long as I had a buddy with me, I could get in the water ahead of everyone else and dive my own dive as long as I was back at the boat by an appointed time. Perfect! I buddied up and had a 55 minute, totally independent dive away from the crowd, EXACTLY what I had wanted.
I continued to dive with them for the rest of the week and found all the other instructors/DMs to be similarly accomodating. All my dives were 50-60 mins long and conducted away from the rest of the group. I also did not find the boats overcrowded, although August is not high season.
The diving was ok. Over 7 dives, other than the usual suspects, I saw 1 turtle, 1 stingray, 1 yellow ray, and a couple of nudibranchs. The walls were pretty nice and some of the wrecks were picturesque. I didn't do the shark dive as I don't really like the idea of feeding them and it cost a lot more than the "regular" dives.
I also dived once with Bahama Divers as my boyfriend decided to do a Discover Scuba Diving course and he didn't want to go all the way to Stuart Cove's. I found the instructor to be good during the pool session but once we got to the shop in the afternoon for the open water dive it all went downhill. First of all, there were 42, yes, FORTY-TWO people on the boat. It was so crowded no one could move. Some were snorkellers, some experienced divers, and some, like my boyfriend, had never dived before. The instructors were obviously very stressed trying to deal with such a large number of people with such varying experience levels and were yelling at eachother, frustrated, and disorganised. At one point they wanted to give 7 DSD students to the instructor that was working with my boyfriend and when I pointed out that I was under the impression that was against PADI standards I was openly ridiculed by one of the other instructors in an angry way. In the end he was given 6, perhaps because of my comment.
We were taken to a crap divesite, which is fine and even appropriate for the DSD students (lots of sand etc) but what about the experienced divers? If I had signed up for their afternoon dive and been taken there I would've been quite angry.
I later spoke to the instructor and he said it wasn't always that busy, but still, I felt it was irresponsible for them to put so many people on the boat together. Everyone, customers and employees alike, were confused and stressed, and my boyfriend was already stressed about doing his first OW dive and found the experience to be the opposite of relaxing.
So, overall, to my surprise, I would reccomend Stuart Cove's over Bahama Divers.
Anyone with more questions feel free to PM me if you like.
