Bottom Time DIves: In Short  

Dive Rate: At $1.50 per minute, the 2011 rate remains more than competitive with other divers charging $80 and $120 an hour, or $2 or more per foot. You may be use to paying by the foot, but it seems highly unfair to charge boats by length when it is rather the condition of a bottom paint and frequency of care that reflects maintenance needs below the waterline.  Therefore, charging by the minute ensures that your craft receives the attention it needs, no less and no more. In 2010 the price per minute was less but an air charge of $2 for every 15 minutes had been added to the dive.  From now on, the air fee is included in the price per minute, and when multiple vessels are involved in one dive, customers share time for in and out, so many typical dive cleanings for Bottom Time range between $20 and $40 every few months.  This is especially true with Companion DIve Customers, a program to automatically care for your craft with others and clean your vessels according growth periods ensuring that your bills remain low and your vessel remains clean for voyages or evening those few hours of outings.  Zincs remain at 75% of suggested retail.  Read 2011 Companion Dive Benefits on Updates page.

Dive Cleaning: There is no compromise on dive cleanings.  Starting at the waterline, the vessels is cleaned and inspected in concentric descending passes on the hull using four blades, three sponges, and a brush to assure that the right tool is used on the right surface and type of paint.  Intakes are cleared and cleaned. Non painted areas are cleaned and scrubbed.  ZIncs are automatically inspected, tightened, and/or replaced.  And most importantly, a detailed narrative is dictated about your craft which is sent in a detailed invoice to you via email and for your payment.

DETAILED LETTER EXPLAINING BOTTOM TIME and COMPANION DIVE SERVICES:

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2. (If you are considering a dive cleaning with Bottom TIme or if you did not get this letter when it was sent out to regular customers last month, please read and review the workings of Bottom Time and how your vessel is to be cared for. Links on the bottom invite you to enroll in Companion Dive Services - if the link doesn’t work, simply email to khathaway@mac.com.  Also, figures in this letter are based on 2010 rates.  A new draft will be prepared for 2011 )
   

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4. In the unprecedented heat of this summer and the associated extreme biological growth in over-heated waters, it has been a challenge to keep the growth off the greater number of my customers’ vessels while also adding new customers (our numbers doubled in three months this summer).  In some cases on the Trent, three weeks has been too long between cleanings.  But now with Fall on and water cooling, growth is slowing, and I would like you to consider the Companion Dive for the care of your vessel under water.
   

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6. Companion Dive’s are automatic.  If I am diving on your craft and have others nearby to clean, I will clean yours and the other vessels generally save between $8 and $10 sharing the dive’s in and out time.  However, so as not to take advantage of one another, I am asking you to email a simple yes or no for the Companion Dive Program: links for this are below.
   

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8. Having a large customer base now with Bottom Time Diving, I am making regular rounds to marinas and docks working on boats in a series where growth requires mass care. As an example, at the end of A dock in Sea Harbour Yacht Club this week, I started with a craft that had obvious algae and some barnacles showing in rising and falling of the bow.  Beginning here, I dove along that dock completing seven inspections and cleanings before the end of that dive.  Of those crafts, all but one had barnacles removed from the prop, bottom of the keel, along the inner rudder edges and from the shaft.  One needed an immediate zinc replacement and another is burning a Maxi Prop zinc that could fall off at any time and will be replaced in the next dive there.  Also, a line cutter inspection showed its value with nothing of a collision remaining but a twisted wire on the shaft which the owner will find on the back of his swim ladder.  Two vessels received little more than a dusting, one having only a few shells.  The cleanings went from 12 minutes ($15.40 total including prep, in and out, dive care, and air) to 25 minutes ($46.60 total of the same including the price of an added zinc).  All of these vessels were previously seen in the first week of August.  Not one of these customers called me for this care, yet all seven will get an invoice shortly discussing the benefits of this dive and two will be told that likely their November /December inspection will not have enough growth for cleaning, meaning that inspection will be free unless a zinc is needed or barnacles have come on in cold weather.  Maybe a couple of these vessels could have gone another month without cleaning, but a twisted wire near a cutlass bearing and two failing zincs made this Companion Dive a win in a big way for my customers (and they don’t even know it yet), and personally knowing the customer getting the $15 bill, I know he prefers to have even a dusting regularly than build-up that is destructive in the slightest.
   

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10. If you say yes to Companion Dives, you are ensuring that you are on the map of my rounds and that those rounds of care will match the growth patterns of waters in your area.  You can always email me for an extra brush down, but you can be guaranteed that I will care for your craft as I am caring for vessels near you.   Also, if your vessel needs the full care of an independent dive (severe obstructions, prop pulled, or major zinc issues), your Companion Dive will amount to a free inspection until I have contacted you about major work needed.  Companion Dive take the headaches and guess work off your hull the next time you throw off the lines.  If you say yes and are at a private dock, your craft will be made in rounds to the nearest marina and you will remain in the lower companion dive charges.
    

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12. If you say no, then you remain in the file for that marina but you craft goes off the geographical grid I am using to navigate from one boat to another and one marina to another.  In effect, you are saying you will let me know when you want the boat cleaned.  Warning:  In cases where Companion Dive care was not clearly requested this summer, a couple of crafts cleaned in late spring did not get cleaned again until mid-August.  With overheated June water, the growth was so severe by August that in one case over two hours was needed to take clusters of barnacles off a craft.  Nearby, a craft that had been dove on monthly (because warm waters on the Trent and Neuse require this from June through September) had gotten a few bills between $32 and $55.  As the dock master requesting this care, his familiarity with the waters allowed him to understand the cost benefits of this choice.  Even if the number of dives and costs of the monthly cleaning came close to the total of the boat that had missed multiple summer cleanings, the clustered barnacles and effort needed to remove shells from this vessel’s delayed cleaning not only created undesired exertion in cleaning but the removal of the growth still left calcium rings from matured barnacles and some paint peeled off with removed barnacles.  Companion Dive cleanings are done as needed for particular water so that barnacles mostly pop off with a plastic spackling blade and without paint coming off the hull.
    

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14. Note, though: cleaning is not a monthly issue.  Currently, Fall Companion Dives have begun, and it is likely that with summer growth cleared away vessels from Beaufort to Oriental to New Bern and Belhaven most customers will find this cleaning the last regular dive of the year.  A late November, early December dive will see to it that unpainted shafts and props are cleared and that zinc protection is sufficient for the winter.  In most cases, you will then not hear from me until the first of March when at the end of winter I begin zinc assessments again with wipe downs that usually have your vessel good until the end of May.  From the end of May or by mid June, depending on your waters and temperatures, your dives will be regulated to monthly or even shorter periods if shells are coming on fast or growth begins to show a lot of clogging issues.
    

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16. Many of you have asked to be part of the Companion Dive Program previously.  And many of you have asked to get on my regular schedule, but with new software and a need to organize a solid customer base for this one man business, I simply ask that you email back your preference on the Companion Dive program: A simple yes or no. Companion Dive Customers will be organized into a regular schedule as needed for waters in that particular marina  The rounds to these customers will take priority over independent dives and even new dives.  If a new customer can fit in, he or she will do so within the Companion Dive schedule or in times outside of these major rounds.
    

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18. But one more things.  Please provide me your Marina, Slip Number, Boat Name.  You can even covert it to using the below codes.  Ie: “BPA21SailAway Yes on Companion Dive” would mean that the craft Sail Away at dock A, slip 21 at Bridge Pointe desires me to inspect as I swim by that craft and proceed with work if 5 or more minutes of care would benefit in the craft’s look and ease of handling from the waterline down to the running gear.  If not, the inspection is free and the customer will still get an invoice telling what was seen.
    

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20. 1.    Marina codes for your files are listed as such:  BB (Blackbeard's Yacht Club), BP (Bridge Pointe), BD (Boondocks), BH (Bridgeton Harbour), BR (Beufort Residence), BV (Belhaven), CL (Cyrus Landing), FH (Fairfield Harbour Private Residences), HN (Hilton, New Bern), MB (Morehead Yacht Basin), NB (New Bern Residence), NW (North West Creek Marina), OP (Oriental Private Residence), PG (Pecan Grove), PM (Point Marina), RD (River Duens), SH (Sea Harbour Yacht Club), TC (Town Creek), WA (Washington), WC (Whittaker Creek), WP (Whittaker Point), WV (Wayfarer's Cove), WY (Washington Yacht and Country Club), ZZ (New Locations).  The two letters corresponding to your location, followed by dock letter, slip number and boat name is your permanent files name.  Yes, these codes show a large area being covered.  However, because part of the goal of this dive business is to bring you a regular update of boating in the region via Cape Carolina, the online journal, a steady number of regular customers in various locations is a key not only to ideal maintenance of your craft but also in providing regular visits to your  marina for updating the website and keeping all of us informed about boating in the region.
    

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23. For those who have reviewed Cape Carolina at www.capecarolina.com, you will note there has been no change since March.  That is soon about to change once we get all these boats in order.  Heat and growth have put a stall on the magazine this summer, but many of your submissions are ready to go live shortly.
    

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25. Please confirm your dive status immediately.  With a great number of vessel under my care, a fall schedule will ease getting you smoothly running through the waters without any worries.   "Yes" will mean your craft will be taken care of underwater without you having to call me or wait for growth to make your vessel sluggish, at which point the growth is fixed and will often dislodge paint.  "No" means that you will keep me informed of your specific dive needs, which you may do so in this response---understand that if I have just made my rounds at your marina and you email for a dive in the next day and are not a Companion Dive Customer, it may be a few days before I can get back to that marina.
    

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27. As always, I enjoy serving you and your craft.  And as a business owner, I am simply attempting to save you wear and money while utilizing time most efficiently for all of us.
    

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29. Sincerely,
    

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31. Kirk Hathaway
    

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33. YES ON COMPANION DIVES, CLICK HERE: 
    

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35. NO ON COMPANION DIVES, CLICK HERE:
    

2011 Top Side Cleaning and Rates

Bottom Time’s topside hull care rates will remain at $34/hr. for washing, hull restoration, waxing, buffing and teak work.  Owing to the strain of compounding a boat from a dingy is discontinued from the water, though topside compounding and some hull, compounding work from floating docks will continue.  In water waxing and buffing will continue as well as topside compounding, washing, or waxing.  Typically, a wash down of your craft runs under $50 with materials.

Email Now for TOPSIDE CARE or WASHDOWN

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