VooDooGasMan
Contributor
Sounds like scuba mau was attracting sharks instead of going to dive them.
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I guess it's fair to say they won't try that again but they just might want to thanks whatever God they believe in for the help.
The possibility for an accident exists equally for all dive ops no matter what and there is nothing they can do about that. The probability is what they can directly effect. Single outboard increases your probability of an accident, taking it out from a close distance to shore such as crossing a channel further increases it again. Single motor goes down and you lose the ability to point the bow into the weather, waves and wind will automatically turn the boat and expose the broad side which can destabalize you to the point of capsize.
I was told more than once that the reason the harbor master closes the port so often and quickly is because the safety margin for so many of Cozumel's dive boats is so razor thin. I think it got exposed if you were paying attention a few years ago when that storm blew in so quickly during the afternoon and so many dive boats had big troubles very quickly and some got swamped and sank. You just have to be aware outside the US that the same levels of regulations and protections don't exist and lax safety is all around you.
Just be careful of the 'what me worry?' syndrome on vacation, just as we are supposed to be smart enough to avoid 'trust me dives', we have to apply the same thinking to other things we are going to do.
From some first hand info (divers on the sunken boat) they were rescued the Navy and the ICE yacht. Drifted 15 NM for 4 hours and were getting close to Isla Mujures.