Not newbies but......
Taking a guided tour in the keys with husband, son, son's friend and a single female diver, can't remeber her name let's call her Jan. The boat the guide wants to use is being repaired and instead of taking the other boat has us wait for the repair, on the dock, in the sun, 95 degrees. Time to hydrate and find some shade. After an hour we decide it's not worth it anymore and tell the guide/captain we're leaving. NO it's almost repaired. Jan still is willing to go. We get into the boat and off we go. Guide starts chain smoking out to the site, boat is a 6pack. Jan tells him she would prefer he not smoke. What guide smokes before a dive? He gets nasty with her and she doesn't back down. He stops smoking and tosses butt in water, in a protected marine park. Now we are annoyed. Jan seems like a good diver, rest of us dive several times a year, not regularly and we tell guide this. Water a little choppy, some current. We all get in. Son's friend, Jose, doesn't wait and jumps in immediately after Jan, somehow hitting her fin. It flips off. She is kind of surprised. Guide gets fin. Jan informs guide on boat before getting in that she has a new bc, it was stuck yesterday and fixed at the diveshop, he says no problem. We all decend. My husband has an issue we all go up. Issue solved, we all go down. After 200' out my husband has another issue. Up we all go. Fixed. Down we go. Not Jan, can't dump air. Guide doesn't notice he's missing someone. She seems ok, I make the ok signal she does it back. She is surface swimming. I should mention that she checked all her gear, tried both regs, checked bc on boat, ect. All of a sudden I notice son's friend having an issue. Stop to assist with son. Husband is ? 50' in front clueless. Guide is 100' away not looking at anybody. Guide keeps going. Guide told us just follow me, swim that way, turn when I do. We wanted more info guide said we didn't need it just follow me. I should mention here that the guide was swimming very fast and breathing very heavy. Perhaps a smoking issue?? So, can't see guide anymore, can't see husband, now both boys are starting to look frantic. Not quite sure where the boat is. As I look up Jan makes the ok, and I do too. She makes some hand motions which I assume is I'm going back and swims away. I go up to another dive group and use my slate and ask for help. They help us back to the boat which is very nice. Jan ends up with her pressure guage broken and swam back to the boat. Don't know how she managed to get there. Husband gets back to boat on his own. We are all in the boat except the guide. NOW my son tells me that when he talked to the guide that he stank like alcohol. NOW YOU TELL ME! The other captain on boat says yes well he has been known to drink. Good heavens what kinda of dive operation are you people running here?? Finally guide gets back to boat, he tells us that was a great dive where would you like to go next? Back to shore. Jan gives him a good piece of her mind. Turns out we learned many lessons here. Our mistake was trying to follow the guide when we couldn't, not using navigation skills,should have paid more attention, should ask for recommendations and heed them-we were told not to use that particular dive shop by the hotel. Jan tells us she learned a lesson here too-she did not have a snorkel on and her pressure gauge had all of a sudden dropped to 0. She had been checking her guage and it dropped right before her eyes. Purchased from the same dive shop as the malfunctioning fixed bc. Later we find out that Jan routinely dives solo but removed her snorkel to streamline herself. She was mad at herself. Lesson to everyone stay together, wear a snorkel, carry a noise maker,don't rely 100% on a guide, or anyone for that matter. If my son or his friend had bolted or Jan wasn't self reliant there could have been a worse outcome. It was just a bad day, bad dive.
