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My dive supervisor's throwaway comment about bottom time finally made sense
I was talking to my supervisor Rusty after a job in Port Fourchon last Thursday, mostly griping about how long our Saturation dive was taking. He said something like, "You're not getting paid for the bottom time, you're getting paid for the planning that makes that bottom time safe." At first I thought he was just blowing smoke to keep me from bitching. But then I ran the numbers on my last 30 day hitch. We spent maybe 14 hours total underwater, but easily 60 hours on gas mixes, deco schedules, gear checks, and standing around waiting for weather windows. That hit different because I finally saw the whole operation as one long job, not just the moments when I'm in the water. Now I'm wondering, how do you guys track your actual paid hours versus bottom time on your dive logs, and does your crew count all that prep as billable or is it just part of the daily rate?
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elliotellis9d ago
Rusty sounds like the kind of guy who drops wisdom without making a big deal out of it. I spent years logging only the wet part of the job and treating everything else like wasted hours. Once I started tracking the full cycle, the prep and the wait and the drive time, it completely changed how I look at a hitch. That downtime is where the real money is earned, because it's where mistakes get caught before they cost someone their life. I still write my bottom time in the log, but now I also keep a rough count of the support hours around it. It makes the daily rate feel way more fair when you see the whole picture on paper.
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