Imported post
<font color='#0000FF'>PETER,
My dear man, PART of me purchasing this vessel & company, was that i had a contract with the pervious owner was to honor all his bookings that were made to him last year for 2004 and that also meant sticking with his price structure.
If you look at my bookings for this season in the website, your find that all the days that are FULL are the ones
1) That have been regular customers for the past 7 years.
2) Have always paid that price, and to my knowledge , there was only a small price increase to cover fuel
price increase PLUS to make it easier for divers to divide the day rate by 12 .
3) Having e:mailed and spoked to the customer database i got when taking over the company, everyone
was happy with the deal, really all they are doing is meeting a different skipper & are please that their
old skipper has sold a his company to someone that is local and KNOWS what he is doing.
4) Deposit has been paid or trip paid in FULL already.
5) Some have booked dates as far as 2007.
A days diving with me is cheap, as i offer a ONE dive in the day for £ 15 a wreck/dive for divers to get wet during the winter months, NOT many skippers have their boats in the water at this time of year, do they ?
NOW, how much is it for me to do a days diving at Scapa ?
Over thae past few weeks , i have enquires from Divers in Holland,France,Belguim and even Austria, thats not bad from someone that has only been trading for 2 months ,,, is it ? and YES , I do have to wait a couple of weeks for the money to be paid into my bank, as i have already had some cheques for deposits from these divers, Even got a dutch chap sailing his 49' foot yacht here with some divers, after i have sold him some Navigational software and shown him how to use it , we aregoing diving.
I have taken out some divers from this site, and personally it has been great fun, FUCK ME, I even let one of them stay/live on the boat on a saturday night , FREE of CHARGE and got his diving weekend paid for by getting him a little dive job to find a boat owners GOLD RING .........If you care to look at my trips over the next few weekends, ya see some names from here have got places booked, and when i place a dive, there are normally 6 names wanting to dive within 4 hours of posting the thread.Some YD'ers will even meet a Taurus Diver this Saturday , that drove down from London , took me for a beer and pleaded with me to run the boat all year round. FFS ( all he had to do was e:mail me instead , asking if i could take him diving on such & such a day ).
STUDY the facts about me and my operation before gobbing off , please.
I'm sure that Dave ( Skipper ) will add to this, and his daily rate is over twice mine & he is a great skipper, NOT only has he phone me on my mobile for 50 minutes , letting me know changes in the MCA coding laws , but financial matters as well, that i didn't know about , what a charter skipper can claim for and what he can't.
If you think that £ 348 for a full boats diving is expensive , Shall i give you a break down on where that money goes , IT certainly doesn't go much into feeding my wife & kids a steak dinner that night.
If you read what YD'ers say about my operations, i'll think that you may retract your statement. I think i provide a good service . Ask digger about skippers taking off divers fins, ask Howard DD how an 6 year old boy carried his dive bag down a steep flight of steps to the boat,( and he got £ 2 for his efforts ), how the wife had greeted all divers with a hot drink as they arrived.
The best one is yet to come , but i will let that diver say himself on here, ( Clue is that it will be AndyP ).he knows something is going on , but i won't tell him .
By the Way, I'm the only FULL time dive charter vessel in Dover, yes there are club ribs and fishing that will take divers out at the same rate as me , BUT with hand on heart, i'm the ONLY diver / skipper here,,, and after your remark , i don't really want to say , " If ya don't like it, F$$$ off somewhere else ", coz thats not in my nature , i want divers here in Dover, not turn them away, AND thats not for personal gain , anyway.
rant over
Andy
FUCK, council tax advise for me in the post...........what an increase