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Private Dives
The "local gang" is a close-knit group of friends in south Florida who do
technical and cave dives nearly every weekend of the year. Most of
our dives are in Florida, but we do occasionally dive elsewhere.
Many of the dives the group does are 'private'.
By that I mean that everyone is welcome, room permitting, as long as
none of the other divers has an objection to the new diver, and as long
as the new diver is qualified to do the dive. We do this for a
number of reasons.
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In the interest of safety, we exclude people
known to frequently disregard safe diving practices.
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We generally exclude those whose gear
configuration or gas choices are sufficiently different from our own
such that mixing the two diving styles would render the dive unsafe.
However, we don't 'preach' or tell anyone how to dive, how to
configure their gear, or how to chose their gasses; we simply
exercise our right to refuse to dive when, in our opinion, gear
configuration or gas choice issues compromise safety.
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We exclude divers not certified in the use of
mixed gas (trimix) on dives deeper than 130 feet. We don't
believe deep air diving is safe or smart, and while we believe that
informed adults should be allowed to make their own decisions about
diving deep air, we chose not to dive with them as doing so would
put us all at higher risk than necessary, and this is already a
sufficiently risky sport.
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We exclude divers without the requisite
experience to safely do the dive. Some of the sites we visit
are well over 400 feet deep and over 100 miles offshore.
Enough said.
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Our group has worked very hard to cultivate
relationships with local boat captains who are generally reluctant
to take divers to such difficult dive sites.
We want to preserve those relationships, and we are very
protective of them. Also,
we spend a lot of money, time, effort, and other resources tracking
down and discovering new, unidentified and obscure shipwrecks for us
to dive. In recent
months, we positively identified two previously-unknown shipwrecks
near Key Largo and tentatively identified a third in the Gulf of
Mexico. We don't want
to jeopardize all this hard work.
With that said, please know that we also do
numerous open-boat dives throughout the year.
These dives are set up and run by the boat operator and we're "just along for the ride”. On
these dives, you arrange for the dive with the boat operator directly
and we just happens to be on the boat with you.
These dives are a great way to meet us and dive with us on
“easy” technical dives. Once
you’ve met and dove with us a few times, we’d happily welcome you on
our private dives as well.
Check out our calendar
of upcoming open-boat and private dives. The schedule is
updated frequently, so if you're looking for a dive and don't see one on
the schedule, look again tomorrow! If there's a 'private' dive
you'd like to do and you feel you're qualified, talk
to me, and I'll see what I can do.
-Mike Rodriguez
Copyright
© 2001 Mike Rodriguez. All rights reserved. |