It's been a busy couple of weeks since my last dive with them, but since you
asked, here goes.
The boat, Fishfood, is new to Brownies.  They were previously located at
Bahia Mar.  The operation is good for diving, but the captain seems a bit
new to his boat.  It only showed at the dock.  More about that later.

Our first dive with them was at Bahia Mar on Monday two weeks ago as of now.
We did Mine Car reef on the first dive and one of the southern buoys of
Barracuda reef for the second dive.  These are both relatively shallow dives
and at most are intermediate dives.  The DM was available if anyone asked
for assistance, but left each diver alone if not asked.  Nobody asked, and
he didn't enter the water (common in S. Florida) so I can't report on his
abilities.  The dive was handled like a drift dive.  The boat never anchored
and I towed the buoy (on both dives).  Like most dives in the Ft. Lauderdale
area, there was little current.  We could have done the dive from an
anchored boat, but, because the boat was following us, didn't have to worry
about returning to our starting point.  While I've probably done Barracuda
more than any other local site, but still managed to forget that the drop
off is on the inside of the reef.  We started out on top of the reef which
is pretty tame.  Things got better when I got us to where we should have
started.  Nobody pressured us to get in quickly, nobody even mentioned when
to surface.  The surface interval was left to us as was the length of the
second dive.  I was quite pleased.  We did about an hour at each site.  The
boat moved to Brownies after our Monday dive.

The following Wednesday, we did the Mercedes first and the Jay Scutti
second.  These dives are a bit deeper and a bit more advanced.  The choice
of sites was left entirely up to us and, again, we weren't pressured to meet
any kind of time limits at all.  We spent about an hour again.  Joe and
another Brownies employee accompanied us.  Each of them sort of acted as DM,
one on each dive.  All they really did was jump the wreck and tie off and
retrieve the anchor buoy.  They did their dive, we did ours.   Everyone was
comfortable with each other's skills, nobody worried about anyone but
themselves and their buddy as their preferences dictated.  John and I both
tend to be same ocean buddies.  John takes a video camera everywhere he goes
and that's where his attention is directed.  I stayed with him some of the
time, wandered at other times as I chose, sometimes keeping only the loosest
track of where he was at some times.  To give you an idea of the
relationship, while in Cozumel, John recorded me as his buddy on most dives.
I didn't record John as my buddy on any.  At any rate, it was good we're
comfortable this way since John dives nitrox on an air computer for added
safety and I dive it on a nitrox computer for added bottom time.  You may
assume he ascended considerably earlier than I did on each dive.  The only
complaint anyone uttered was the "DMs" who both swore they were taking the
next nitrox course because "they were tired of waiting around for me to get
tired of diving on each site while they watched their deco obligation
increase."  It was more of a backhanded complement than a complaint.  I knew
they were diving air and took some pity on them, ascending well before my
deco status or gas supply required me to.  Since they alternated duties,
only one of them stayed with me on each dive and on both dives, I hung back,
ascending only a little above them as they released the mooring line and
brought it up with them.  I knew they had to be into deco and, not knowing
what their consumption rates were, wanted to be sure they had enough gas to
make it to the surface safely.  They did, but on the second dive, didn't
have much left afterwards.

The boat is something like 40-45 feet and is made by Island Hopper.  They've
been in the dive boat business for a while and do a pretty good job.  The
Fishfood can probably handle a dozen divers reasonably well.  It's
comfortable and seaworthy, has all the right safety equipment and is well
set up.  The only thing wrong with it is that it's a single engine boat.  If
you've operated a single screw inboard, you know how difficult they can be
to handle in tight quarters.  The captain had no problems in the open ocean
or, for that matter, in tight quarters . . . until he tried to dock.  Even
with a bow thruster, he got the boat in a bit crooked and in trying to get
it where he wanted it, he bounced off a private boat (no damage) and wound
up even worse than he started.  His relative inexperience showed up then.
In trying to control the boat, he gave it too much throttle and smacked the
concrete dock, doing a pretty good job of turning a rather expensive
Fortress anchor into a pretzel and cracking a bit of fiberglass on the
pulpit.  Anyone can make a mistake, and if he'd admitted his, nobody would
have cared.  I'm sure the added pressure of wanting to create a good
impression in his new location contributed to problems.  Instead of
admitting he screwed up, he stated "It wasn't the DMs' fault, they weren't
familiar with the boat".  Everyone aboard knew it wasn't the DMs' fault,
whether they knew what to expect or not.  The captain had the helm and if
someone needed to know what he was going to do, he needed to tell them.  He
lost some points for his failure to take credit for his own mistakes and of
course, enough money for repairs that the trip was probably a net loss, but
that's about all he lost.  I noticed no safety issues in operation of the
boat during the trip of the dive.  I'll use the boat and the captain again.

Lee