Smoking on a dive boat

[TMHeimer]

I just wanted to give a little information about the physics of air moving around a moving boat.

As you can see from the diagram below, what happens on a boat depends upon the nature of the boat. If it is a typical large dive boat with a solid front, as it moves along the air moving air will wrap around it and blow back into the boat. If someone is smoking at the back of the boat, the smoke will drift back into the boat with it. If, on the other hand, it is a small open boat without an obstacle in the front, the smoke will drift off the back.


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This is the same reason the back window of your SUV gets dirty on dusty roads and wet when it's raining.

I can see this logic. This would mean that it's OK to smoke at the rear of certain boats, but not others, no?

 

[Abdullah]

Cars are optional. Especially choice of car/engine. Don't believe otherwise.

When was the last time you caught a bus?

I drive a Prius and they don't have mass transit here. They do sell nicotine patches and chewing tobacco though. Hijack over...

 

[OkByMe]

Ya'll sound like Bloomburg. Don't you have bigger fish to fry?

 

[lamont]

In the privacy of your own home you can smoke whatever you like as far as I'm concerned (tobacco, marijuana, heroin, cocaine or 5-MeO-DMT). On a dive boat if you're a tobacco smoker you should really stick with nicotine gum (unless everyone knows in advance that you're putting on a floating cigar lounge...).

 

[Scott L]

Not normally seasick prone, if smoking occurs on a dive boat, I am likely to start hurling. One of the many appealing aspects of scuba diving is enjoying the wonderful fresh sea air. Smoking is an obnoxious affront to the well being of the vast majority of other scuba divers. Go somewhere else to accelerate killing yourself and others.

 

[NAM001]

I am really dissappointed that you would attempt in one sentence to paraphrase my position on the mattter. First of all I have never taken taken the position that it is a god given right to blow smoke in your face. I am saying tht we all have a social OBLIGATION to get along and accept that not everyone makes the same choices that you or I do. In doing so in the case of smoking. The smokers have a social obligation to make every effort to smoke in a manor or place that will impact those around them the least. That is the process of meeting some one half way to resolve or minimize a problem. Problems rise when the non smokers refuse to make an effort to meet half way also. Problems arrise when non smokers go out of thier way to cause a problem that would not normaly exist for the purpose of agenda support. Dont get me wrong Bob I respect you adn the things you have accomplished. My argument its with the message and not the messenger. People who smoke are not scum of the earth and second or third class people. Thjose "NAZI" non smokers need to sit in a nail shop for a n hour or so being a dutifull husband as we all are and then step out side. Once the fresh air revives them then ask them how the smoking issue ranks in regards to what they just sat through. Operators know that if they ban smoking that they will loose upwardly to 20% of thier customers, and that directly relates to the bottom line. There are areas thta there is perhaps a 1% smoking population in which smoker discrimination is not a factor. There are other areas that cmokers are a higher percentage of thier income. In tht situation could you say that the smokers are extorting operators to accept them by virtue of threatening thier pocket books? If so it is the same process as the non smokers use to push businesses to become non smoking. both are extortion actions, both are equally wrong in the process of making change. Only the numbers of smokers vs non smokers decides which extortion practice is the acceptable one. When you cant win the minds and hearts of men then you use force. Its the NAZI way.
eh

... so all of that amounts to you will defend to the death your God-given right to blow smoke in everybody else's face ... and anyone who objects is a liberal Nazi ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Abdullah]

In my experience, boat operators who establish a smoking area protocol in their pre-departure briefing don't have any conflicts with smokers and non-smokers. It's when the customers must police themselves that conflicts occur, which is more common on boats where the crew are smokers themselves.

If I know that the stern will be loaded with smokers on the way to the dive site, I'll move to the bow. But when there is no set safe haven for me, I have to create one with my fellow paying customer who feels quite comfortable chain smoking all the way to the dive site. People will compromise, but generally, the smokers compromise is for me to inhale less smoke, rather than no smoke. And, any tobacco smoke makes me nauseous at a time when I really need to be clear headed.

With all the low cost OTC nicotine supplements available, is it too much to ask for a smoker to apply a patch or chew the gum rather than puffing away in the pilot house?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I am really dissappointed that you would attempt in one sentence to paraphrase my position on the mattter.

... and I was disappointed that you attempted to politicize a lifestyle choice. In my lifetime I've known many "liberals" who were smokers ... and many "conservatives" who were adamantly anti-smoking. It transcends politics. Suggesting that people who choose not to smoke are "liberals" is absurd, and deserves ridicule.

As for your use of the term "Nazi", that's a clear indication of where you stand ... all subsequent rationalizations notwithstanding. I'm not interested in your rationalizations. It isn't about smell ... geez, I work at a wastewater treatment plant ... smell doesn't bother me. It's about choices. You want to exercise your choice to smoke. I want to exercise my choice not to. As long as those two choices don't conflict, there is no problem. When your choice to smoke impedes my choice not to smoke, then we have a problem ... because the exercise of your choice removes my ability to exercise mine. In a situation where I don't have to breathe your fumes, I don't care what you do. If you light up, I can move away. On a boat, that choice often doesn't exist. Therefore you're forcing me to share your disgusting habit with you ... and imposing your choices on others, whether or not they want it.

That's the issue. If you want to use hyperbole, then this issue is more closely related to rape than politics, since it's about exercising control and forcing harm onto someone else so that you can exercise your own selfish desires.

O
perators know that if they ban smoking that they will loose upwardly to 20% of thier customers, and that directly relates to the bottom line. There are areas thta there is perhaps a 1% smoking population in which smoker discrimination is not a factor. There are other areas that cmokers are a higher percentage of thier income. In tht situation could you say that the smokers are extorting operators to accept them by virtue of threatening thier pocket books? If so it is the same process as the non smokers use to push businesses to become non smoking. both are extortion actions, both are equally wrong in the process of making change. Only the numbers of smokers vs non smokers decides which extortion practice is the acceptable one. When you cant win the minds and hearts of men then you use force. Its the NAZI way.
eh

Nope ... it's called free enterprise. Nobody's forcing anybody to do anything in that case. People are voting with their wallet, and merchants are exercising their right to design a program that appeals to the widest available customer base. It has nothing to do with Nazis ... and to suggest it does seriously trivializes what that term means.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[jar546]

Cars are optional. Especially choice of car/engine. Don't believe otherwise.

When was the last time you caught a bus?

Does the factory that makes the gear you use do so with zero pollution?
Does your gear get from the factory to the Phillipines? Via horseback and a rowboat?
How does that compressor work that fills your tanks?

We all make or contribute to a carbon footprint on this planet. Some more than others. Much of it is necessary, smoking is not. It's a personal choice.

Can we get back to the smoking on a boat issue now?

 

[OkByMe]

Ok... my crack about Bloomberg did not break the tension. So my 2 cents. I smoke a little almost daily. I don't smoke in my house, but on the porch or outside if the weather is pleasant. Nothing like a butt or 2 with the morning coffee to get things stirring. When I smoke on my boat, I'm aware that you can bring trash to the waterway and I take everything out with me, including the cigarette butts.

People on a boat are somewhat trapped by circumstance and really don't have a choice to leave once the boat is underway. On some occasion I have smoked on a dive boat when underway... I go to the transom. Some cabin configurations will draw air back from the transom toward the cabin when moving, bringing some of the engine exhaust along with some cigarette smoke. I choose not to smoke on those boats in that location since I'm not wild about breathing the exhaust fumes. You can move to the downwind rail and all the smoke is carried away from the boat. In rough seas, that will beat you up a bit, so then I don't smoke.

What cracks me up is some Sheeple will freak out when you light up. My Daughter is one of them. I never smoked around my kids when they were growing up, not even in car with them. I can be out on my enclosed "smoking porch" with the exhaust fan going - drawing air through the door and out the duct. I proved it to her with a smoking incense stick, yet she could not smell the incense. But if I light up her brain goes into psycho mode and she claims the smell is coming in the house. Pavlovs dogs. She has been trained by the media to to recoil at the sight of a cigarette.

The gasses and odor goes where the smoke goes, simple as that. If you are attempting to smoke on a boat and you can see your smoke going to the other passengers and don't do anything about, even I will jump your ass because I need to protect them to protect my smoking. There is unfortunately nothing you can do about the psycho sheeple, they are, like my daughter going to believe what they want to believe.

It is very much like the anti-gunners. Never having smoked, they don't know the process and don't use simple observation to determine if they are affected. That is a cigarette and it is going to kill me. These same types will stand on a street corner near the traffic and get exposed to far more harmful gases and higher concentrations than you could get from a PACK of cigarettes. Then you have the ex-smoker. They know what is involved, but go psycho because they are so afraid that any exposure could tempt them to start smoking again.

I have to admit that my SAC could improve somewhat if I just exercised more and backed off on the smokes. I do that a couple of weeks prior to my trip out, which is about half the year. Part of my physicals include a visit to the pulmonary folks for an X-ray and spirometer check. Lung efficency is normal and volumes and good - for my age - 62. Been diving for 36 years and smoking too, plus a stint as a welder and machinist. Nothing like a little vaporized oil to screw up the lung function.