he's right, we all did not love the Nekton boats. For all the reasons Matt said. And here are a couple more: wet floors in the cabins all the time, the crew had to put towels down and OMG the food! TERRIBLE, just TERRIBLE.
As for the % mix with nitrox, on the last cruise we did, Cayman, there were 3 people bent that week. One of the people took a couple chamber rides, came back and told us what the MD said: Everyone over 30 should always use Nitrox, so a 25% fill doesn't cut it.
I would never do another trip on Nekton. There are lots of really nice land based and yes, several liveaboards that are not super expensive.
No wet floors in my cabin. The food on my trip was not as good as on the Aqua Cat, but it was entirely acceptable. (The chef on the Aqua Cat was absolutely world class. But I got dreadfully sick because the ship bounces around like a cork, with its shallow draft for the Exumas.)
As for people getting bent because of the gas mixture, BULLS#!T!!! If you hold any sort of diving certification, you are supposed to understand no-deco limits. Nitrox does not make you less likely to get bent. It does give you more no-deco time, but also a shallower max depth, which you should understand if you are nitrox certified.
Every diver should understand the limits for the gas mixture s/he is breathing and dive accordingly. I happen to like nitrox 32, partly because I have zero interest in going deeper than 100 feet on scuba. (Maybe freediving, if I can manage it some day.
) But to say that every diver over 30 should be using nitrox just shows that that MD knows little about diving, because plenty of over-30 divers will want to go deeper than nitrox permits.
In short, those divers bear their own responsibility for failing to coming up within their no-deco limits for the gas being used, or for failing to understand deco and make their deco stops. 25% nitrox is chintzy and Nekton deserves criticism for not providing 32. But 25% nitrox is not why those divers got bent unless they assumed it was 32 and they failed to test their own tanks (which is a requirement for diving nitrox!!!)
Recreational scuba diving is fairly safe, but only if you follow the rules. And among those rules are: know your gas mixture, and know the limits of your gas mixture, and dive within those limits. One mixture is not safer than another. They just have different limits. There is nothing less safe about 25% nitrox or air, compared to 32%. Just different limits on times and depths.
