Diver Lori once bubbled...
Can all you find wrong with my post is my poor math skills on time to fly typo? Good grief. Whether it was 22, 24 or 28 doesn't matter as DAN recommends 18 (rounded)...
No, it wasn't just your math that was wrong.
And now you're backpedalling on what the exact SI value would have been. So just what flight did you leave on?
Let's not forget that the Sat 6:20am flight only gives a 14 hour SI if you were to do the Friday PM dive, and this is the flight that "99%" of the Brac visitors leave the island on.
Let's also not forget that it is incorrect to apply DAN's 18 hour minimum SI to fly recommendation for repetitive dives if you didn't also adhere to DAN's recommendation to take "rest break" days off during a series of repetitive dive days. If you didn't take ~Wednesday off, then your SI should probably have conformed to the 33 hour SI, as per DAN's research.
BTW, even if it didn't somehow apply to you personally, it does help make sense as to why the dive op's don't generally run Friday PM boats. Since this was your first visit, you're probably not aware that the way to prevent this inconvenience is to talk with the Diveshop manager on Wednesday, and show them that you have the minimum required number of customers already lined up to run the boat.
(TIP: this is also how you get extra trips to Little Cayman).
We were well within those guidelines making the afternoon dive we had PAID for.
You may be right, but you haven't convinced me of that. If you want to convince me, all you need to do is to just provide the following:
a) Your departure flight info (time, date, flight#)
b) How many dives you did each day during your stay (eg, what day did you take your break on?)
Similarly, you criticize the hotel for your "wake-up knock", but you first need to figure out just what you're really complaining about. Is it:
1) That the "wake-up" was done at the wrong hour?
2) That they took the extra effort to come knock on your door because of the problems they're having with the phones?
FWIW, it sounds to me like they went through the extra effort (good thing), but made the error of doing it at the wrong time of day (bad thing). YMMV, but I'd rather have this inconvenience than to miss all notification and discover that I missed my flight home (worse thing).
...You've obviously not seen how fast a tank with a blown O-ring can empty itself out have you? Or the chaotic situation it can cause with it totally blown? I've seen both and I would prefer not to take the chance on the latter, thank you very much. It's a matter of degree and can go from minor to major...being an anal cave diver makes me an "informed" diver altogether and prepared to manage the risk whether it's overhead or not. In this case it was a deep wall dive......that IS overhead as a direct ascent is improbable from 110 feet. .
Nice rant. Hate to tell you this, but you're NOT as informed as you think you are.
First, you completely missed my point about knowing what the objective statistical risk is between a "good" and "bad" o-ring's chance of a complete blow-out. I'll lay it out more clearly thusly:
Q1: What is the objective statistical risk of a catastrophic failure of a non-leaking O-ring?
Q2: What is the objective statistical risk of a catastrophic failure of a leaking O-ring?
Q3: What is Q2 minus Q1?
I was referring to Q3.
Next, given your credentials, you should know how long it takes a tank to empty. Since you've forgotten, I reefer you to your own back-issues of Undercurrent. In there, you'll find that they did some testing and they found that the fastest that they could empty a full AL80 was in ~3 minutes and to do so, they literally had to run the test with no regulator attached and the valve cranked wide open.
Simplistically, that's 1000psi/minute, which means that it will take 30 seconds for a diver with only 500psi remaining to empty out...call it 15 seconds until the supply drops low enough to start to cut into the regulator's IP.
But since an O-ring blowout is going to leave the regulator in place, the flow is constricted. Similarly, the reality is that you're not going to be at max depth with less than ~1000psi. As such, you really have MINUTES instead of seconds to do your emergency OW ascent, even if its very busy and exciting in appearance.
If you don't believe, me, just go check out your Undercurrent back issues for the data. And get someone to help you with the math
Geez....get a life! Sounds more like you're defending your poor financial investment with Divi. OR you're a shirt-tail relative of the GM.
With that said.....I'll drop the subject. Obviously my method for controlled diving and view of quality customer service is vastly different from yours.
I suspect that your anger is blinding you to the facts, and some of that is being displaced on me.
First off, despite my financial interests, I have not only disclosed them, but I've also repeatedly criticized Divi for their shortcomings in many open forums, just as I have done in this forum. Try some websearches elsewhere and you'll see that I'm far from being anyone's "Me Too!" coat tailer.
Second, our views of customer service aren't all that different: I don't put up with BS either. But what is substantially different is that I only nail them for their actual failings, and do not create fabrications to "puff up" my case as I think you did.
For example, I've learned through the Coconut Telegraph that there were bad Thunderstorms last Thursday...I'm almost surprized that you didn't try to blame the weather on the Resort, too.
Third, your methods of controlled diving have some holes of ignorance in them. I've shown you where, and I'm sorry if I seem a bit rough in how I presented them...I'm gentle with my help to novices, but less so with people whose credentials indicate that they should already know better. If you want to call that 'trolling', that's your perrogative - - I just hope that your intolerence to listening to alternative opinions doesn't get you killed you in the meantime, because it sounds like you're suffering from "Infallable Instructor" syndrome.
Fourth, if you want another place to vent your spleen, I suggest that you email Ray Hobbs at Divi Resorts. His email address is "rhobbs at diviresorts dot com" (rhobbs@diviresorts.com). I will warn you however, that your case needs to be a lot more clear and articulate (eg, less "ranty") than you've made here.
Finally, while I do have an ongoing financial interest with my Timeshare, the personal good news for me is that now that its more than a decade old, it has pragmatically already paid for itself, and I have the "OLD" contract which includes a provision that allows me to walk away any time that I like, with no future financial obligations. So I'm not in a position of being "stuck" in using my TS, which is why I'm not going to try to candy-coat the reality and fool people into going there. In fact, the fewer people that go there, the better it is for me. I've NOT encountered long lines at dinner, or crowded diveboats for years at the Tiara, partly because I know to avioid going during the crowded periods like you did.
-hh
