[MSilvia]

Originally Posted by gary_harter1

Any others with good or bad experiences?

Prior to a cruise I took, my friends and I chartered a couple of dives in Cozumel with Xtabay Divers. That was awesome, and I couldn't be much happier with the experience.

Our dives in Roatan and Belize were booked through the excursion desk.

The dives in Roatan were beautiful, but the operator packed as many divers as they could onto the boat. Despite being one of the first into the water, and one of the last out, I still felt rushed on both dives, and had over 1000 psi left in each tank. It was grossly overpriced, and I'm not a big fan of "cattle boats", so it was less than I'd hoped for.

The Belize dives were a travesty.

The cruise ship anchored offshore in Belize, and the cruise excursion folks had arranged for a dive boat to come and pick divers up for one of their 'official' trips (for a whopping $110). There were occasional rain showers as we motored away from the ship, but no signs of any problems until it became clear that they hadn't received a request for rental equipment from one of our divers. They had some extra stuff onboard, and outfitted her with a too-small large BC (she needed an XL), and a belt that came within an inch of not being able to fit around her. In addition, a regulator that they had brought for one of the 10 or so other divers on board had a broken mouthpiece, and that diver would have been SOL had I not had a spare and a zip-tie to fix it with, as there were no other spares on board.

We got the briefing, entered the water for our first dive, and as I was the first in after the first DM (the captain was the second, leaving his helper in charge of the boat), I was in an excellent position to watch overweighted divers crashing down onto delicate fan coral, then overinflating and rocketing back to the surface before finding a happy middle ground that approximated neutral bouyancy. The dive was a bit of a "cluster" as a result of there being so many inexperienced and out of practice divers, but settled down into a brief but otherwise largely uneventful dive. Uneventful, that is, until we surfaced and divers started grappling for/with the exit line that had been trailed out aft of the boat. The ladder was on the port side, and in order to get to it, the divers on the line (I didn't use it, as there was no current) had to pass within a foot of the outboard props... which were still engaged! One diver was nearly pulled into them by the thrashing of those behind her on the line, but the props were disengaged in the nick of time thanks to the frantic shouting of one my friend Ash, who was right near her. Somehow, everyone managed to make it aboard safely, and we had an hour long surface interval on a sandy patch of a deserted caye.

Dive two again saw me entering right after the DM (George), and the diver in the ill-fitting rental gear followed. She entered without her weight belt and signaled for help from George. He asked me to descend so the other divers could rally there and wait for him to return while he assisted her. I did so, and wrote 'George (DM) asked us to wait here for him' on my slate. It was largely met with shrugs from divers who read it and swam off anyhow... into a reef they didn't know. Jeremy (my buddy) and a father/son team were the only ones to wait as instructed, and it was several minutes before George, Ash, and the equipment-challenged diver joined us. The other DM/captain swam off moments earlier to find the stray divers.

It was a nice reef dive, but when we surfaced the boat was nowhere in sight. Neither were the other divers. It was just the seven of us floating in the Carribean in about 3-4 foot seas, maybe a mile and a half from Goff's Caye off Belize... the only land we could see. George assured us that the captain was the best in the business, and that he'd be right with us. I began to inflate a yellow marker bag, but he assured me it wasn't necessary, so I stowed it again. 45 minutes later, the father and son were getting seasick, and fatigued, and kept drifting away from the group. We were all getting tired of floating, and decided to descend 15 feet for a brief dive with our remaining air, just to get some relief. After about 10 minutes, I was down to 500psi, and decided to ride it out at the surface.

George, who had been very accomodating and had done an excellent job of keeping the group's morale high, began talking about how likely it was he'd be fired, and was considering going back to Guatemala to get his old bartending job back. I inflated the marker and started blowing my never before used, but always carried whistle. Two of the other divers also started whistling, and waving, and the others shouted, and about an hour and a half after we initially surfaced, we were spotted and picked up by the boat operator... who hadn't seen the other divers or the captain.

It turns out that the captain had caught up with the group shortly after they had run low on air, surfaced, and realized there wasn't a DM with them. He led them to a sandbar where they could stand, and they were picked up by another boat. They caught up with us after we spent about 10 more minutes scanning the waves for any sign of them. Said the DM, "I told you he was the best."

We returned to the ship without lunch, and submitted "comment cards" to the excursion desk. Several days later we recieved notes on our cabin doors informing us that we would be refunded half the cost of the excursion.

Needless to say, I recommend NOT leaving it to the cruise ship to book your dives for you.