In business it is never how you manage things when everything is fine, it is how you manage a situation when it has gone awry, with an open ear and mind to listen to your clearly frustrated customer and understand the faults in your operation to come to a common ground resolution. However, at SFDH, this isn't the case, as you'll soon realize this operation is poorly run by people who lack basic customer service, and safety, skills. Its worth noting, you may believe you're in a T-shirt shop instead of a dive shop.
I called and talked to Mike, who I guess is the owner/manager (or at least acted like it), because I was more than angry about the crew and the operation in general, but Mike doesn't like "cuss words" (tip for ya, most adults use the word "Profanity"), but he and his crew should check their language in front of everyone too, especially since the expletives were flying out of their mouths in front of a child who was on the boat! I chose the words I did with him because there was simply no other means of describing the operation. But I get it, Mike tried to control the conversation he was having with me, to be in control. Sorry, I know the tactic and whenever someone implements it you prove you're in the wrong and unwilling to hear the ever present problem with your operation, especially when a clearly frustrated customer is on the phone, this is a poor tactic in regards to customer service.
Set aside their rancid business practices and horrible customer service, this operation is dangerous, they simply do not care about safety. I have never witnessed such chaos on a boat in my entire life, I now understand why this operation has sank more of their boats than any other dive operator here in South Florida, it all finally makes sense to me (don't believe me, look it up). What makes this worse is no employee is wearing anything which would elude they're staff of SFDH, and when you're waiting on the dock to see where to go, or when to board the boat with your gear all around you, the staff just walks by, ignoring you. How can you tell who actually works there? You can't! No uniforms, no single piece of clothing common among the crew, you'll love being ignored and confused. On the boat they had passengers doing crew work with the lines, ladders, and all other things, I was half expecting a passenger to take the helm. Worst of all, they do a half baked roll call at the start and never do another roll call again, even after a dive, it truly is a wonder they haven't killed someone yet, but the day isn't over.
There are complaints about them calling a dive over trivial means, and I will second the complaint. The young and incompetent captain called the dive down to Lady Luck because one diver didn't just drop negative and descend, like the gentlemen before him, to a depth where there was zero current. The current at the surface you ask? Easy, ~1 knot, nothing more, a child could counter that; however, since the passenger came back on board whining and complaining (I'm not exaggerating) they "called the dive". Seriously, we drop negative all the time in WPB and hit the wrecks perfectly, even in ripping currents, but this is assuming the captain knows what they're doing, and young lady who was captain simply does not know what she is doing. I got a tip for them, drop further south, have the divers drop negative, and they'll descend right onto the wreck, we do it ALL the time in WPB, literally, ALL the time.
I have to make mention on the use of a tag line, this isn't normal when you're in these waters due to the effect of the Gulf Stream nearby creating a north bound current. Every dive operator just positions the boat north of us on surface, gets close enough to us, and calls us into a short swim to the ladders with the current pushing us to the ladders, even with a catamaran. SFDH deploys the tag line so it has to go with the current; thus, you're going to be fighting the current to get back to the boat, on the tag line. When we did the shallow dives closer to shore, where the current was about 4 knots, its tiring and lots of divers had issues with using it. One final mention was how divers became entangled in the tag line while climbing the ladder, the crew simply had no clue what they were doing, this is super dangerous. To wrap it up, they smoke and vape on their boats, even around cylinders with 100% O2, think about that for a second. We watched someone smoking around the cylinders and you can even spot cigarette butts on the boats themselves.
This place simply isn't worth the money, or your life for that matter, you have many other safe and professional options. read more