No one specified that I recall; we went with the small group (3 of us, plus a couple of other divers on board) and that's just how the dive went. I'm aware from other posts on the forum that op.s sometimes take people to a shallower site to start with, such as Palancar Gardens, and that's the 1st we went to.
Yep. Your coming in a cruise ship could have been a red flag because the majority of cruise ship divers are infrequent divers and given that there were three of you and only one of him, he wanted to take you where he could watch you and control any problems before deciding to take you somewhere where he'd have less control. When I asked Jeremy why he felt comfortable taking me to Devil's Throat and doing mandatory deco on my first dive with LU, it had nothing to do with my "resume" of 600+ dives and instructor and tech certs, but all to do with the fact that he knew the other divers on the boat were capable of doing the dive and I was the only unknown factor - given that I was just a party of one, he figured he could control me no matter how bad it got, even to the point of holding me down for the deco stop if necessary.
Kicking in place is mainly what I was referring to; I had to do it myself a few times to pace Jeremy, but not too bad. I enjoyed drift diving; my wife didn't, but sinusitis and worrying about her brother were issues, and she's got less passion for the sport.
Jeremy does tend to go slow. He's a skinny guy so the current doesn't push him as much as it would push someone with more "resistance". Drift diving does take some getting used to and in faster currents an inexperienced diver may be faced with either kicking too much against the current to allow the group to catch up, hence blowing through air faster and potentially overexerting (which can lead to overbreathing the reg and subsequent panic or even a heart attack in the worst case), or else losing the group entirely (which can lead to panic, getting lost at sea, or getting run over by a boat on the surface). These are a couple of reasons why I personally feel that Cozumel is a lousy choice for beginner divers versus locales with more benign currents such as the Caymans or Bonaire.
To me it's not about fearfulness of social sanction, so to speak, but rather respect. Let me give this example. Driving across the country side, with roads not too busy, sometimes I get in the left lane and neglect to get back. My wife calls me a 'left lane loser.' People passing on my right sometimes give me the stink eye. Doesn't really bother me, since they have plenty of opportunity to pass. It's minor.
I wouldn't give you the "stink eye", I'd just ride your bumper until you got the idea. But I'm better now. In the past when I had more anger-management issues (i.e. road rage), I would have flashed my brights and honked until you got the message, eventually got in front of you and slowed down until you got over. Inattentive rude drivers affect everyone else on the road whereas inattentive rude divers usually only kill themselves
Then again, I agree that there's a difference between doing that in the country versus doing it on an L.A.-area freeway. In the country, I'd just go around you and probably not even give you the middle finger, mainly because there's a good chance you'd have a shotgun and would race after me.
I'm not great on air consumption now, but with conscious attention and effort I can do pretty well. When I started diving, I was pretty bad. Being the one who gets the dive called for everybody is not pleasant. I've seen enough posts on ScubaBoard to know others sometimes feel the same way.
I feel the same way about buddy pairings, one reason I won't dive with an op that would insist on pairing me with an "instabuddy". When I'm low on air, I ascend on my own. Then I'm only annoying myself.
Of course, I'd probably be looking to dive with Living Underwater or Aldora so I could get those big 120 cf tanks! Love me a 120...
Stick with LU then. With Aldora, the entire group ascends and if you go through an 80 faster than the rest of the group you'll still go through a 120 faster than the rest of the group. With LU, if I'm the first to get LOA, I'll see if there's anyone else nearly ready to ascend. If not, I'll just signal Jeremy to deploy his SMB and I head up alone, letting the rest of the group enjoy the rest of their dive and hoping they don't happen across anything I'd want to see (or prepare myself to tune out all the "did you see that?" chatter when they climb back aboard the boat).
I too can extend my bottom time with conscious attention and effort, even skip breathing to the point of giving myself a headache, but I've found I enjoy my dives far more by ignoring my rapid air consumption and putting my conscious attention and effort instead into finding critters and taking photos. If it means my dive is 5-10 minutes less than the rest of the group's, at least I know I enjoyed my bottom time more than if I had spent the entire dive worrying about it.