Living the Dream Divers

[billinwilliamston]

Even for hotels, you have to take what you read on TA with a grain of salt. Over the years, my wife and I have stayed at many perfectly good hotels that got bad reviews and vice-versa. It seems like most reviews are written by people with an ax to grind or a vested interest in the property.

More than once, we've gone to hotels that were supposed to have "dirty" pools only to find that the pools were quite well maintained, but they had people of color in them. We've gone to hotels where the staff was supposed to be rude, only to find that they were perfectly nice and very helpful, they just didn't speak English very well. We've also stayed at places that got good reviews where the rooms were dirty and poorly maintained and had a nasty smell to them. We recently stayed at a hotel that had gotten unbelievably bad reviews. It turned out to be a great hotel, but there were picketers out front who had been on strike for 8 years (didn't like that too much).

 

[lblamboy]

Realizing I'm a little late to this thread, I noticed a few errors that are worth correcting...Samboney said

They made the call immediately....[then, quoting officials] “The dive company did exactly the right thing by raising the alarm as soon as they realised that something may be wrong. Their quick thinking combined with the fact that we were able to deploy so quickly most likely saved the lives of the divers today.”

This statement is exactly why I chose them to dive with LTD. And I will again.

Here are some links you'll find helpful:
Cayman island scuba divers rescued | Scuba Diving Accidents and Scuba Gear
cayCompass.com :: Divers rescued

If you do a little more homework on this situation, a few things jump out that suggest Samboney is making some understandable, but wildly incorrect, assessments of this situation:

First, Officials were apparently called around 11:40 am...and apparently the divers were found within MINUTES after the rescue was called in...HOWEVER, the divers say they were actually stranded in the water for over 2 hours in very rough seas...Thus, the call was NOT made immediately...rather, it sounds more likely that the dive company staff made the call only when LTD's "Our Boat" hadn't returned to the Yacht Club on time.

Anybody familiar with the small operators' timetables in GC for morning two-tankers will know that a call to officials at 11:40 am is anything but a prompt call....and given that the divers were stranded for over two hours, yet were rescued very quickly after the call was made, suggests LTD did NOT have a staff member on board while the divers were down...potentially in violation of the one-up, one-down regs...and that the call was probably from a staffer back at the YC?

More importantly, though, comments I have heard by others very familiar with the situation (and validated by some of the posts on one of the links above), make it clear that NOBODY but LTD was crazy enough to dive North that day...Do your own digging around on this point, but it seems clear to me that LTD made a very ill-advised decision to go North despite very clear warnings and indications of very rough seas (Small boat advisory, GH even had white caps, etc!), while more seasoned ops went elsewhere for the day and all returned customers home without fanfare...LTD, having only one boat available, though, apparently put money over safety and went North after getting "stuck" there.

PLEASE, then, don't make the mistake of crediting their call for help, to rescue them from a bad decision that risked the lives of their customers, as being a great reason to choose them...Where I come from, nobody gets to be a hero for taking necessary actions to clean up a mess of their own creating, and it's certainly not a reason to select them over other ops.

Don't get me wrong...I know, have dove with, and even like Gary (LTD's owner-op), but, like some others on this board, I'm not a fan of letting slick websites and TA marketing taking precendence over the facts when making decisions that are safety-based. I'm sure Gary and crew learned some tough lessons as a result of this episode...but PLEASE don't allow/help him turn it into yet another marketing positive for his op.

Also, while on the topic of correcting facts, another poster claimed that LTD lost two divers in 15ft of water...This is probably also incorrect...The reports say that they were found outside the reef, near SRC...The reports do NOT say that the divers had been diving the SRC site....More likely, if you'll indulge in a little reasonably-informed-speculation, they were probably out in very rough seas with only one crew member on board, diving on the wall at a site near the channel and got into trouble near the end of their first dive or during their second, and were stranded for a few hours just outside the reef until a staff member back at the YC got concerned because they were 30 or so minutes late getting back, then the staffer made a call to officials and they got rescued around noonish.

Am I totally correct in my suppositions? Probably not...but I'm close enough to know that this was not a moment LTD will be openly bragging about, and I understand why the point was so delicate for them when a customer/poster mentioned it...

 

[Janeca]

The divers were at stingray city and the north sound was not only rough but closed for boats that day. The divers were sucked out of the channel and were found by the marine rescue boat after a long while in the water. I was working on the island at the time and although fortunately the rescue was successful no boats should have been out. LTD could not take the boat round to the west which was diveable as it was a raft boat and too rough so chose to risk the STC dive site.

 

[Mark Derail]

dixiedan here is the article from CayCompass news if this helps;

cayCompass.com :: Divers rescued

I've been diving all week with Cayman Turtle Divers (Chris & Kelly), and all week there's been a small boat advisory in effect, so Stingray city was a No-Go.

Attempting to do it on the sandbar as a snorkel-adventure with Dexter this Saturday afternoon.

Seems after the above "incident" the Gov't is stricter when the weather is rough. Sustained winds of 30+ knots since we landed last Saturday. Wave heights of 4-6 feet.