PARADISE HUNTER
Contributor
We took the family down for a last minute vacation to the Keys for a week’s vacation before our kids head back to college. My son and I dove four days with Rainbow Reef. The weather was excellent with flat water, air and water temps in the mid 80s. Vis averaged around 60 feet and very little current except one dive. Most of the reef was healthy, saw very little algae or dead coral on French and Molasses reef dives. Saw no lion fish. We saw plenty of large schools of fish of the usual Caribbean suspects and far amount of micro life, jaw fish, blemies, flamingo tongues and a couple nudibranchs. Not much on the macro side of things. Few nurse sharks and a couple eels. No other shark species, turtles or rays. Moon jellies near the surface on most dives.
This trip came together less than two weeks prior do to work isssues. It’s been at least ten years since I used a cattle boat type op. We usually dive with smaller (less than eight divers on a boat) type ops. But with short notice the couple of smaller operators didn’t have space for us. I new that Rainbow Reef was a large operation, but they seemed to get decent reviews on SB. I didn’t realize they were the largest dive op in the northern hemisphere (as they claimed) until I got there. For the most part they were well organized. We had different staff every day and most of them were pleasant people. However they run their operation on a tight schedule. I suppose you have two with six big boats and 20+ divers on each of them. Add the dms, first mates and captain and you have a very crowded boat. Dives were strictly 45 minutes.
I had 1000-1500 psi left every dive. You were told many times the boat was leaving in an hour. Surface intervals were as long as it took to get to the next dive site, usually 10 minutes. You had to hustle to swap out your tank. It’s their business model and seems to work for them. It’s just not our thing.
The biggest issue we had was the heads on the boats. On two of the three boats we were on they didn’t work. Not that we needed them. But one boat we dove on for two days smelled so bad it made you gag when the wind died down. It was like sitting in a carnival porta potty in 90 degree weather. Rough! With the amount of money coming into that business there is no excuse for at least pumping it out if not repairing it.
We look forward to diving Largo again, but will use a smaller more diver oriented op.
This trip came together less than two weeks prior do to work isssues. It’s been at least ten years since I used a cattle boat type op. We usually dive with smaller (less than eight divers on a boat) type ops. But with short notice the couple of smaller operators didn’t have space for us. I new that Rainbow Reef was a large operation, but they seemed to get decent reviews on SB. I didn’t realize they were the largest dive op in the northern hemisphere (as they claimed) until I got there. For the most part they were well organized. We had different staff every day and most of them were pleasant people. However they run their operation on a tight schedule. I suppose you have two with six big boats and 20+ divers on each of them. Add the dms, first mates and captain and you have a very crowded boat. Dives were strictly 45 minutes.
I had 1000-1500 psi left every dive. You were told many times the boat was leaving in an hour. Surface intervals were as long as it took to get to the next dive site, usually 10 minutes. You had to hustle to swap out your tank. It’s their business model and seems to work for them. It’s just not our thing.
The biggest issue we had was the heads on the boats. On two of the three boats we were on they didn’t work. Not that we needed them. But one boat we dove on for two days smelled so bad it made you gag when the wind died down. It was like sitting in a carnival porta potty in 90 degree weather. Rough! With the amount of money coming into that business there is no excuse for at least pumping it out if not repairing it.
We look forward to diving Largo again, but will use a smaller more diver oriented op.
