Recovery Dive - Anchor

[The Kraken]

I'd like to throw this out for you guys to bat about a bit (geez, don't you just love that aliteration?) . . .

I did a recovery dive today to find a fellow's boat anchor that he lost after it had become fouled.

Found the anchor, valued at $300, and the owner was quite pleased. I charged him $50 for the dive.

The dive took about 1.5 hrs, 40' max depth and in relatively temperate water with a visibility of about 7'.

Was the amount I charged him too much, too little, or juuuuuuust right?

 

[O2BBubbleFree]

For a dive of 1.5 hour that's, what,$33.34/hour, not counting your setup time, drive time, equipment costs, etc... That's a very reasonable salary, IMHO, but I've never done any salvage, or pro diving for that matter.

I'd say let the market decide. Did the customer think it reasonable? I'll bet he would have thought twice that much was a good deal.

 

[cool_hardware52]

For a dive of 1.5 hour that's, what,$33.34/hour, not counting your setup time, drive time, equipment costs, etc... That's a very reasonable salary, IMHO, but I've never done any salvage, or pro diving for that matter.

I'd say let the market decide. Did the customer think it reasonable? I'll bet he would have thought twice that much was a good deal.

Sounds cheap to me, but in these cases I always factor in if the boat owner might be up for a dive trip in the future

regards,

ch

 

[scubasean]

I'd like to throw this out for you guys to bat about a bit (geez, don't you just love that aliteration?) . . .

I did a recovery dive today to find a fellow's boat anchor that he lost after it had become fouled.

Found the anchor, valued at $300, and the owner was quite pleased. I charged him $50 for the dive.

The dive took about 1.5 hrs, 40' max depth and in relatively temperate water with a visibility of about 7'.

Was the amount I charged him too much, too little, or juuuuuuust right?

Well...A few years ago (before I got back into diving) my wife dropped our car/boat keys into the water, a few inches away from the dock, in ten feet of near zero vis water...

We paid a guy $80 for a 45 second dive to get them for us...

It took him 20 minutes, start to finish...And I was glad to pay...

 

[Fitzy]

last year we retrieved a guys $350 pair of sunnies from right under the jetty. Took less than 10 minutes. He offered $50 bucks up front if we would do it. He was more than happy to part with his $50 to get back $300 in value.

I reckon you did the job for a price that the boat owner should of been extremly happy. To replace the anchor - $300......He paid $50.. Very good price me thinks. But its always nice to get Paid anything to go and do a fun dive...(from a new divers point of veiw anyway)

 

[divercooke]

i clean boats for a living
most of the time i do it for free
or for 5-$10.00
for the hour and a half job i charge $65.00 an hour
but i don't know why you spent this much time
on the job. you'll never make a living that way.

 

[scubasean]

i clean boats for a living
most of the time i do it for free
or for 5-$10.00
for the hour and a half job i charge $65.00 an hour
but i don't know why you spent this much time
on the job. you'll never make a living that way.

I have to admit that I have no clue what this means...When I first read it, I thought you were saying that you clean boats for a living, but do it for free....or for five or ten bucks a boat...

 

[nauidiver2004]

Divercooke,
I am so confused. Sooooooo very confused. What was that?

 

[keyshunter]

I'd like to throw this out for you guys to bat about a bit (geez, don't you just love that aliteration?) . . .

I did a recovery dive today to find a fellow's boat anchor that he lost after it had become fouled.

Found the anchor, valued at $300, and the owner was quite pleased. I charged him $50 for the dive.

The dive took about 1.5 hrs, 40' max depth and in relatively temperate water with a visibility of about 7'.

Was the amount I charged him too much, too little, or juuuuuuust right?

I have recovered many anchors, some that were seriously fouled and had as much as 20 feet of heavy chain attached, from depths as deep as 110 feet. I am curious as to the technique that you used to spend 1 1/2 hours recovering an anchor from 40 feet.

 

[Charlie99]

I have recovered many anchors, some that were seriously fouled and had as much as 20 feet of heavy chain attached, from depths as deep as 110 feet. I am curious as to the technique that you used to spend 1 1/2 hours recovering an anchor from 40 feet.

Perhaps his technique is similar to the one I've used on search and recovery dives: search for however long it takes to find the item; recovery in a couple of minutes

He did say 7' viz and my experience is that boaters often have only a vague idea of where a lost item is located.

If you want to give him a hard time, you ought to ask about OSHA and compliance with commercial dive regs