How are gas prices and inflation going to affect your diving?

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Eric Sedletzky

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Just wondering if anybody feels that the current surge of gas prices and maybe to a lesser extent inflation will affect your diving?
I suppose it depends where you dive, if you have any local diving, how far away it is, and what state you live in.
For me living California I pay $6.29 or more a gallon for regular and drive a vehicle that gets between 18-20 MPG. That equates to about $40-$50 on average for fuel for me to get to the ocean and back locally. That could start to add up.
For now work is busy so it’s not really a hard concern, even though it sucks and I thing we are being gouged, but that is another story.
For me to get to Southern California to dive off one of the charter boats is a bigger deal. It would cost me about $250 in gas. Boat rates have gone up a little to $149 weekday to $169 weekend for a day boat, three tanks off the Spectre out of Ventura. That’s actually still a deal. But then they do not allow overnight staying on the boat the night before for free anymore since the Conception disaster so a hotel would be needed. Add another $169-$200 for that.
A lot has changed.
 
I’ve been diving at sites about 1:30 one way from home since end of April when local quarry opened. There’s another quarry which is only open to dive shop sponsored groups, where I dived last weekend. I should probably be there about once a month. That quarry is 1:10 one way from home.

Over the winter I had been planning on heading out to the local quarry both weekend days, but with gas prices about $5.50 right now in suburban Chicago, that hasn’t happened except for last weekend. I’m going for quality, not quantity right now. I have a Ford Escape that gets 27 mpg even loaded down with gear.

I went out to a quarry in OH with a friend in early April. That involved an overnight trip. I was out at the WI mine I cave dive at once a month for Jan-March. That’s 3.5 hours away and sometimes involves a hotel.

I would ordinarily drive an hour each way one night a week for nice fills on my LP tanks, but I discovered the quarry gives me nice fills. I’m already there. The quarry considers my LP50s so small that I get 2 fills for the price of 1. They’re usually half full when I’m done diving, anyway. So I’m coming out ahead. They have banked 32%, too.

I’m doing a couple of charters out of Milwaukee over the next two months. I’m waiting to see what the fuel surcharge is going to be. I’m 90 minutes from Milwaukee.

I’m heading to MX in August for full cave. I haven’t flown since 2015 so I have no comparison for the $725 round trip business select ticket from O’Hare to Cancun on Southwest for a Wednesday to Wednesday trip.

I have CCR training coming up in the fall (unit is on order, delivery date sometime in September, I’m guessing), which will involve a lot of trips into WI and overnight stays. Sites 2-4 hours away. Putting $$ aside for that in the scuba fund.

I just got a 13% raise at work. Timing was nice!
 
It hasn't affected me, gas here is only $0.11 a gallon (Yes, 11 cents a gallon). Dive sites are only 5 - 15 minutes away from my home.

:p
 
My diving won't be affected as the shore sites are maybe an hour away here-- a little more when I'm in NYC area, but without Canadian gas prices (though the US prices are obviously higher too). Gas & inflation will affect most other things I do, such as the actual trip to NY coming up.
 
Gas prices will kill me lol. I don’t really have many diving sites nearby. Oh well, just have to put more money toward diving rather than eating out and shopping. No biggie.
 
Fuel supplement is pretty high for some airlines. It can be as high as 30% of the fare.
 
1 to 1.5 hours to dive sites. But with summer here almost everything else is within 5 miles and I've got a ebike. So not really any effect.
 

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