Marc, 3P's generally tries to have its boats leave the marina at 8:00AM so the courtesy transport to the marina which leaves from their in-town shop one block back from the Aqua Safari pier leaves at 7:40AM. As such, another op that actually leaves from the Aqua Safari pier or another in town at 8:00 AM could add a few more minutes to your breakfast but overall it won't make much difference as they have a longer run to the southern dive sites by boat while 3P's courtesy transport to the southern marina covers that distance on land.
As far as bottom time is concerned, 3P's is a dive op that lets divers dive their own tanks and computers. As such, bottom time is pretty much governed by your personal air consumption and dive profile... You can dive deeper for a shorter period of time or shallower for a longer period of time. You can expend energy chasing this and burn air or take it easy and let the current do most of the work for you. Generally, on most of 3P's dives you are going to either run out of bottom time on your computer, run low on air, or could start to get a chilled around the 70 minute mark so, I'd say on average 70 minutes ends up being around the average max dive time for most. Newer divers do tend to consume more air until they start to learn the secrets like long, SLOW deep breaths - SLOW inhale, SLOW exhale, no need to choo-choo train breathe as you really don't NEED all that air, we're just used to breathing one way on land so we do it underwater too until we learn a different style underwater. Also, not wasting energy chasing critters everywhere or fighting against the current and diving staying shallower instead of deeper. Last year we had a newer diver on board who was surfacing after 45 minutes or so and some input from others on the boat had him pushing 60 minutes almost immediately. I even surfaced before he did one day and when he reached the ladder I asked him what he was still doing in the water! He just focused on what others had told him and there came the additional bottom time in no time. 70 minutes is a pretty long time under water compared to many dive ops on the island. The ops that run large boats and large groups seem to start people heading up at 45 minutes! That just stinks in my opinion when someone has piles of air and is nowhere near deco limits to be told its time to head up... waste of $ if you ask me and I won't dive with such an op. Our last op changed management and headed in that direction - when that happened, we went in another direction and started looking for a new dive op and found 3P's!
Personally, I am usually bouncing up against my deco limit on my computer before we reach 500-700 PSI but we sip air and do tend to stay shallower than the group as a whole because there is more light and more color for our UW photography. Once you get below 50ft everything starts to look pretty washed out as the light spectrum is filtered by the water with reds fading first, then orange & yellow and once those are gone you're left with greens, blues, browns/maroons in my opinion unless you have a dive light you can shine on things to reveal their true color. At 80' I think everything looks blah and just wastes bottom time but that's just me. Others will disagree.
With regard to leaving equipment with 3P's... Yes, we drop it off the afternoon we arrive and they take care of hauling it to and from the boat, it is set up when you get to the boat for your inspection, (you do generally break it down and bag it yourself daily) they rinse all of it at the shop and hang it including suits, booties, and hoods, and you really never need to haul it again until your last day when you pick it up at the shop.
