He Dennis, first off, again, hats off to you, great job done by all last year.
I'm just gonna make some comments based on what I experienced :
The boat votes where to go, there are NO EXCLUDED site except the very advance site but I can have smaller boats take members there.
Boats were limited on sites due to time and distance, advanced sites were grouped in with this limitation since advance dive sites are on far north and south of island, our group was told more than once that they couldn't go to some sites because of how long it would take. DM and crew made it also very clear that they were under direct orders to keep diving toned down on first couple of days, DM explained this in detail.
As for small boats, I'd love to hear any details about how to get small/fast boats in the mix. Last year we were mistakenly under the impression a small boat was in the rotation and that would be our chance to get to some advanced sites due to the boat being fast and could get there and back in time and stay on the schedule, however small boat never appeared.
This would be a big factor in our decision to go again. Event was great, but I've been to Cozumel so many times, we really like to get to some of those farther and advanced sites when we go there, if there really is an opportunity for this to happen this time that would be a great new feature to this years event. I realize you will never be able to please everyone, no matter what you do. And the job of organizers you guys did a lot goes unnoticed and unappreciated for the fact you actually do move some mountains in getting done what you guys did.
Divers are grouped according to their experience level. I make the list for the groups not the dive op.
Dive groups rotate boats so they get the chance to dive with other member. We try to allow as many members to dive together as possible.
If we go again, I want to make sure we do get grouped by experience level, we were definitely on a mixed group from extremely experience to brand new newbies. It was all good, but if we go again, I would want to make sure to actually be grouped by experience this time. Perhaps was my own fault as my profile was very lacking at that time, or perhaps I missed an email or PM about experience levels when the boats were being grouped?
The groups rotating on the boats was a really great feature of last year, really enjoyed that part, allways meeting new divers every day on the boat.
This year your DiveMaster will rotate boats with your group.
I think that's a great idea, that's more similar to how dive trips usually go and makes for a much better experience, since both the divers and the DM get comfortable with each other above and below the water.
First diver out of air everyone goes up is NOT their policy with our group, we go up when the DiveMaster says. All my dives last year were handled in this manner.
Only exception I can recall is on night dives for obvious reasons.
You definitely don't dive your tank, but you don't dive the first out of airs either. We were pretty much first in the water and last out on every dive, the DM did send first out of air up, but it wasn't a continuous process, usually when he was down to about 4-6 divers that was the final group that went up with him. I had no really qualms about it, we could have personally dived longer on most dives, but they were all pretty good dive bottom times overall.
I'm sure you guys will out do yourselves on the current 2012 invasion. Had fun last year, thanks for all you guys did. (and I hope you got some freebies out of it, you should!)
