ScubaGadget - The Deep Background on Scuba

Recently, we embarked on a trip to Florida mostly to visit family. We had much to do while there, but we wanted to make sure that at least one day’s dive was on the plan. You’d think it would be easy to find a good place to dive in Florida, but our forays over the phone and on the web, left us less than satisfied. Dive shop owners that we contacted from our Google search were often unfriendly, uninformed and, in some cases, downright rude. We finally found a dive shop owner who sounded knowledgeable and professional – Chris of Silent World Dive Center. It was comforting to see the SCUBA Diving Magazine, reader choice on the website (and a website that wasn’t horrible).

Silent World is a full service dive center, offering daily trips to the reefs and deeper waters out of John Pennekamp State Park and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Florida Monthly readers voted “Best Dive Shop in Florida” in 2007. We could see why, as our experience was smooth and proficient from the get go. Chris booked us a room at his recently built apartment just under his and his wife Allison’s house. It was spacious, clean and private and well extremely will priced at $65 a night. He also has a good working relationship with other nearby facilities and could have assisted us further had his place been unavailable.

We drove down to Key Largo from Orlando. It was rather late when we arrived and the dive shop was closed. Chris had told us that the door would be open, with keys on the table when we got to the apartment at his place. We were quite please when we entered the apartment. It was roomy and comfortable. Chris even allowed us to return after the dive and take a shower. Whether this was standard policy or not, I could not say, but it was definitely a check-plus in our estimation.

The next morning, we arrived at the dock. There were several divers, dive students, crew and staff milling about the two Silent World boats, both fast 30′ Island Hopper custom dive boats, said to “save 20 minutes each way.” Each seated 12 divers. The shop regularly runs a shallow reef trip and deep wreck trip to the Spiegel Grove twice a day. We found our captain and were told to “Hang on, there was a problem with the manifest and we would be able to get on in a minute.” Apparently, a couple of people from the day before wanted to switch dives and dive on our boat, which was going to the shallow reefs. They shuffled things and people around, and we boarded.

When we were putting our tanks/regulators together, John had a slight leak and asked the crew for help. We were disappointed when they said, “it is only a little leak” and did not even have the Allen wrench which was needed for a quick fix. The shop is moderate in size and is full tech diving center with mixed gasses available.

Pros:

• The crew and especially Chris were amazingly efficient at organizing the groups handling issues on the fly.
• Chris was a master at multi tasking as he bopped around the shop grabbing up rental gear for one customer, handing out forms to another, and answering questions for us. All of this will still being attentive to each customer.
• The shop apartment rental is a great bargain.
• The Num Thai Restaurant and Sushi Bar next to the Silent World shop is friendly, flexible and economical with great food.
• The boats are spacious enough that we did not feel crowded with the 14 divers we had on our two person boat.
• They handled the mini-crisis of an overbooking with confidence and speed. We never felt worried that we were getting bumped.
• The boats are wide and can handle higher seas than other boats the same length.

Cons:

• The crew and staff were friendly but not warm and fuzzy or overly helpful.
• We were disappointed that there was not any save-a-dive kit or simple tools available. The owner said he would rectify that.

We give Silent World diving and 4.25 out of 5, mostly because of the tools issue above. We will dive with them again. All of the divers we spoke with had good things to say about Silent World. Repeat divers to the area that we interviewed also offered that if you prefer the smaller group six-pack option, nearby Quiescence Diving is a great option. Planning a winter dive in Pennekamp gives you a unique perspective on boat size. Because of the shallow reefs, if you choose a small boat you have much better chance of getting “blown out” and having to cancel the dive. The Silent World boats were choosen because they are fast but can still run on any day that they larger boats can go out.

Oh, by the way, despite the historical cold weather the dives (North Dry Rock and North-North Dry Rock) were great.

If you are interested in diving at Key Largo, visit Wet Cat Scuba and give us a call!  We can get you great group rates.

By Chaela Sumner and John McKenzie