The wreck was great! We were lucky with no current, but visibility was a little limited... about 40-50 feet.
Unfortunately, we chose the wrong dive shop for our purposes. For good or bad, we are used to making our own way through wrecks unless we penetrate, which we didn't want to do this time. We dive the wrecks in the Keys all the time and certainly don't need a guide.
Dive Key West is going to make sure that their liability insurance remains virginal. Diving with a guide was absolutely mandatory. If you became separated from the guide, they would go into "missing diver" protocol and would abort the dive for everyone. So to you photogs, NO LOITERING! You had to keep up with the group, which was from 4-6 divers per guide. You had to have a snorkel ( we borrowed them from a guide). You could not go below 100'. Lots of rules to follow!
We knew we weren't going to keep up with a large group, so we paid an extra $100 for a personal guide. We told him he was now our model. Nice guy, he took it well. The point at which annoyance turned to infuriation was when we found out that the dives were limited to 20 minutes bottom time, no exceptions. We could deal with the rest of the rules, but this was a show-stopper. My computer showed another 19 and 15 minutes left before deco on both dives before ascending, and I came up with 1800 lbs of air. It was a pretty expensive trip for just 40 minutes of bottom time.
My conclusion: if you are a new diver or a nervous diver or a not too bright diver, you might appreciate the anal handling of Dive Key West. However if you are an experienced diver and photographer, you may want to look at the other dive operators. We sure will the next time we visit the Vandenburg.
Fletcher
