First drift dive with Jupiter Dive Center

[Scott L]

I have dove with JDC several times over many years. I have always found them decent, friendly, good boats, nice shop. Like many Flariduh shops they tend to have a few to many rules, lol, but frankly they are a great dive center and a great place to dive with.

N

I can't think of one rule other than a 45 suggested time limitation. Spear-fishing is also allowed.

 

[acteg]

6lbs of weights with an AL 80 seems just about right for me in saltwater (no exposure suit). In fresh water I am using 10lbs with a 5/4/3 wetsuit, but feel that I may be slightly overweighted (still need to dial it in a bit). I would like to use a steel tank and go with no weights if possible but have yet to find a dive op that rents steel tanks for Air. JDC rents steel for nitrox. I am most likely going the bp/w route, so hopefully no weights needed for warm water diving anyway. I plan on using a SS plate with AL tanks and an AL plate with steel tanks (if I ever get them).

JDC has 2 boats with (I believe) a 20 person capacity. They also have a sister shop Riverview (or Riverwarlk) dive center that has a smaller boat with a 6 person capacity. I believe the cost is slightly higher with the small boat.

As far as rules goes, JDC's dive master didn't go over a lot of rules. She went over the dive plan, she told every diver they are responsible for their own safety and sticking to the plan, and she went over the entry and exit process. The boat Capt. went over the normal boat safety/location of items, and entry and exit process as well. The only other thing I remember them talking about was making sure you had the proper license for lobster. I thought it was a good balance between Dive ops that hold your hand too much, and dive ops that let you go willy nilly. They kind of left it up to you to follow the dive guide around or do your own thing.

I have an Excursion also. I don't use the dump-able weight pockets at all. In fact, I leave them on the boat. I place all of my weight in the trim pockets. I typically only dive with 4 to 8lbs of weight and I've found that placing them in the trim pockets greatly reduced the face down tendency when on the surface.

You're only using 6 lbs of weight with an AL80? Perhaps you can try a steel tank on your next dive. Depending on size, you may not need any additional weight at all and I think you may enjoy the trim benefits of employing that setup. I only dive steel tanks and the weight I place in my BC is generally for trim only. Give that a try...

Quick question, does JDC operate their own dive boat? I did a dive down that way last year on a vessel called the Blue Tang. I don't recall which shop I was using but the boat crew was very professional under some fairly trying circumstances. I was impressed.

 

[Ron Parker]

Before your next trip, to help ease the sea sickness try eating ginger tablets and or real ginger with your meal before diving. By far, JDC rocks for east coast Florida diving. Been there many times, plan on heading back Sep to Nov 2011. Winter diving there is off the freaking hook.

 

[acteg]

Ron,

Thanks for the tip. I've had success with dramamine in the past, but hated the groggy feeling that lasted for hours afterwards.

I had a couple of other comments I wanted to mention in my original post but I forgot, so I'll go ahead and mention them now.

I've been really consuming data from scuba message forums / articles online and this has been the main source of scuba knowledge at this point. Because of this, I had the impression that everyone and their brother was using a bp/w setup and it was the new evolution of scuba best practices. So far in my dive career, I've only seen one bp/w setup, and it was used by my dive guide when I dove the vandenberg. The simplicity of the system, coupled with my guides excellent trim and bouyancy, really got me interested in the bp/w. I wondered why more people weren't using this system? After reading all the anecdotal evidence on the web about the bp/w I figured that I just haven't been diving the right places or haven't done enough dives to see more people with bp/w setups. Since both JDC boats dock at the same location, and everyone is waiting to board, I had a good opportunity to look at about 30-40 divers gear setups. One thing I noticed was only one guy was diving a bp/w, and when I talked to him, he had just gotten the setup and really liked it. He went with a DSS setup, which I assume he heard about from web forums such as this (where I first heard about DSS). Everyone else was diving with a typical BCD (jacket style and back-inflate). I thought that the reason for the lack of bp/w could of been the age group of the divers? Most of the divers seemed older. Many of them being in the retirement age category. I'm guessing the age demographic was due to the overall cost (expensive hobby) of diving or the geographic location (retirees in S. FL). With older divers, I figured they probably had already established their setups prior to the bp/w craze or they weren't avid users of the internet where the virtues of the bp/w are regularly extolled.

The other thing I noticed, was the rampant use of the integrated air2 octo. It seemed like everyone was using the octo/inflator. I like the streamlined properties of this setup, but wonder about having a single point of failure for two important safety features.