Nitrox at Little Cayman beach resort

[donnad]

my travel agent says its $12/tank for nitrox........... that will add up to about $360 for two people, fifteen dives.........seems high!!! any personal experience with that?

 

[Hawkwood]

I believe the Southern Cross Club charges $15/tank for nitrox.

 

[JS1scuba]

my travel agent says its $12/tank for nitrox........... that will add up to about $360 for two people, fifteen dives.........seems high!!! any personal experience with that?

That's about right for places in the carib. What you might want to do is to not book your nitrox until you get there. Find out what dives you are going to be doing and then determine which ones you want nitrox for and which only air.

If your dives will not be exceptionally long and they are shallow you can probably get away with one nitrox cylinder and one air. Ideally you would want nitrox 36% unless you are doing dives that are deeper than 90fsw. If they only have nitrox 32 then use that for all your dives that are 110 and shallower and then jump to air for the 2nd dive.

Also when you go there see if you can get credited for the air tanks you are not using some places will do that others will not. A lot has to do with what it costs them for nitrox. And while some think its not expensive, in remote places it can be super expensive.

A good nitrox computer that allows you to change mixes easily between dives will solve a lot of the "gas issues".

Cheers

 

[Alex777]

Yes, $12 - $15 is the going rate here for nitrox.

 

[donnad]

thanks everyone.

 

[divingjd]

Check for a package price. I seem to recall LCBR had a package discount if you bought a nitrox package. By the tank, $12 sounds right.

 

[-hh]

I believe the Southern Cross Club charges $15/tank for nitrox.

IIRC, most of the dive ops on Little Cayman don't have their own Nitrox fill station, so when a customer wants a tank, they go down the road to LCBR and rent it. Thus, their price is the $12 that LCBR charges, plus a $3 handling fee for themselves.

When I've been to Little Cayman, I've found that when the operation's dive schedule is a bit 'limiting' on total in-water time, it essentially never pays to dive Nitrox at the $12/tank price, particularly since they don't give you any credit for your unused air tank.

After 5-8 days of consecutive diving, I will find that my (conservative) dive computer does start to complain, so I might burn a nitrox tank on the first dive to keep it from shifting into deco quite so easily, as we all know that some destinations are more sensitive to the bogeyman of required deco versus just a mundane safety stop, even when the requirement really comes from the degree of the dive computer's conservatism.


-hh

 

[donnad]

thanks for the tip. that's what i think i'll do.