Remember the days of boarding the boat on the rickety old dive ladder, wobbling from side to side....
Those days have gone.
I decided enough was enough and designed a new ladder, as many of you will know I spent a few years in England working as a Mechanical / Electrical Engineer (14 years to be exact).
Luckily this experience has helped me out quite a few times in our travels around the world.
The new design is great, its extremely over engineered and very strong. We fitted the ladder, tested it and what a difference.
Divers are now climbing back onto the boat wearing their equipment with ease, thus saving JP and I from early retirement due to slipped discs !
Soon we will have photo's of it so you can see what to expect when you dive or snorkel with us.
Sally is on the road to recovery after being bitten by an Island dog, luckily there is no rabies on St.Martin.
She was walking down a back alley and the dog was obviously protecting a property. Luckily JP was a minute walk / limp away and she manged to get to hospital. After a course of Antibiotics and no diving she is doing great and will be back in the water on Friday to teach an Advanced Open Water course.
New boat - the search is still on for the new Octopus Diving boat, we have narrowed it down to a 36 foot Twin Vee Catamaran or a Custom built dive boat - the problem with the custom built boat is that its is just a "pure" dive boat and we need an all round dive / snorkel / pleasure boat that people can relax, sun bathe and have fun on.
Watch this space as I made the final offer today and hope that it is accepted on the Twin Vee.
She's a monster and has all the toys one would expect on an offshore fishing vessel. She may be huge (36 long and 12 foot wide) but with only a shallow draft she only needs small engines to push her along and will be as fuel efficient as our current boat.
Being a catamaran she is extremely stable and offers an amazing ride in big seas.
Business is still great and even in May we are busy, I found out from a reliable source yesterday that the Radisson in Anse Marcel is fully booked for June and July - this is very promising so we should have a great summer.
It seems that people have accepted the recession and are just getting on with life as usual which is great - lets hope it continues.
We are still number one with a 5 star rating on http://www.tripadvisor.com/ you can read all our latest reviews by following this link:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g147351-d1092282-Reviews-Octopus_Diving-Grand_Case_St_Maarten_St_Martin.html
That's about it for now, we will update again soon.
Thanks for reading
Chris.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
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2 comments:
Hence why we employ JP.Surely also because he is the lion of the sea, no?
WOW, it sounds like you are really making great strides in making an already AAA+++ operation even better. I'm sorry to hear Sally got bit, I hope she was able to bite him back !!! And people think diving is dangerous...
I can't wait to hear if you got the new boat. Being a diver, I was rootin' for the dive boat, but a catamaran sounds very cool too, that way when your bored you can offer "sunset cruises"!
I'll keep watching.
I guess we need to try and get back there next year. Money has gotten so tight, we are only going to get one dive trip a year for a while unless some rich uncle I don't know about dies and leaves us the keys to the kingdom.
I just wish our timeshare system had something closer that the Oyster, but it wasn't that bad of a drive.
Hope you get the new boat soon !
Greg on Oklahoma
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