Drift diving is NOT so relaxing!

[seeker242]

Drift diving is very relaxing. Most all of your scenarios are just a result of poor skills or poor judgement. Poor skills and judgement are not limited to drift diving. Poor skills and judgement are a problem with any kind of dive.

 

[flyboy08]

Well, drift diving would make an excellent AOW course...much better than fish identifying!

 

[mcohen1021]

I never said a river drift dive was the perfect scenario, but merely a way to get some exposure to currents. I trained on the very slow and very shallow comal river in texas.

I have been 100s of drive dives over the years and the best advice really is that you have to be prepared to adjust to the conditions for that dive knowing they could change even mid dive.

 

[electric_diver]

One thing to remember is that current is relative. If you have never dove in a current before a mild current can be intimidating. You will often hear people describing the current as "ripping". What that means is that the current is stronger than they had experienced before, not that it was fast.

Another factor is the person's swimming ability and fin choice. A strong swimmer with good fins will be more comfortable in current compared to a weaker swimmer and or someone with poor fins.

 

[Snoweman]

"Tag lines" are pretty common in Florida. Usually they are twice the length of the boat and can be lengthened depending on currents. Great dive boats will pull your butt in once you are on the line, unless of course, there are several people hanging on the line waiting to board.

I've only ever hung off of a tag line while waiting for divers to get in the water. I DO prefer that to the idea of a negative entry.

 

[hammet]

For Florida drift diving, I have a somewhat irrational fear of the skipper of the boat, if he's by himself, falls overboard or drops dead of a heart attack while I'm 60 feet below the surface.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

@shoredivr

People need to come visit us for a season in the 1000 Islands to understand.

I've done lots drift diving in the Caribbean, the east coast of Florida, lots of rivers including the Niagara above the famous falls, and what we have is the scuba version of base jumping in a wingsuit while skydiving especially between 150 on wrecks like the A.E. Vickery, 170 on the Oconto and J.B. King, and 250 on the Roy A. Jodrey. When I think about relaxing drift diving, I think warm water and drifting into or off the Robert Gaskin. When I think about the scuba version of Normandy, I think the Oconto and the King.

 

[Clayton122]

Not true. In Ft Lauderdale yes. In WPB no.

I did some diving in West Palm Beach ( Narcosis dive company ) and they required each person to have an SMB.

Personally, if your jumping into the ocean, or even the Great Lakes, without an SMB, your not diving very smart to begin with.

On my boat, there were actually people arguing with the DM about having to carry an SMB, because they didnt want to.... Morons.

 

[boulderjohn]

Didn't we lose one of our most beloved members of this board to a drift or drift-like conditions where up and down drafts resulted in her and her husband becoming separated and they never found her?

In that case, they encountred some kind of a swirling current that threw them around and separated them a bit in depth. That ended quickly, though. They made eye contact with each other, and the husband figured all was well. He took his eyes off of her to tend to somethings, looked back, and she was gone.

 

[boulderjohn]

I think the primary problem with this thread is that people are taking their own personal experiences with drift dives and then writing as if those experiences are the same as all other experiences. I can't estimate how many hundreds of drift dives I have done. I would say that more than 95% have been easy dives with no real complications. Here are some descriptions to illustrate the possible differences.

• I had been told by several different dive operators in Cozumel that they would not go to Barracuda Reef in the north because the currents were too treacherous. When I finally got to go there, there was no current whatsoever. You could easily swim against the supposed current direction to explore the site.
• The next time I went to Barracuda Reef, the current was raging diagonally across the reef, which is for most of its way a series of hills. When you went between the hills, it wanted to sweep you off the reef, so it took pretty strong diving skills to counter that.
• Two years ago the boat I was on in South Florida was supposed to do a wreck dive followed by a drift dive. The DM tried to set a line on 2 different wrecks but came up empty, saying the current was far too strong for the wreck dive. We would not even be able to pull our way down the line to get to the wreck. We all agreed to do 2 drift dives instead, understanding that they would be wild rides. They moved to the appropriate reef, but there was no current at all there. None.
• I have done two different dive trips to the western Pacific in which I was warned that the drift diving could be treacherous. I bought a PLB in case we got swept away. In 5 total weeks of diving there, I never encountered a single current that was anything other than mild and easy.
• On more than a few occasions diving Paso Del Cedral reef in Cozumel, the phrase "As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly..." went repeatedly through my mind as we were blown along by a strong current. It was fast, but not really a big deal. I don't think anyone as concerned.
• Doing a drift dive off of Yucab wall in Cozumel, a friend of mine and her husband got low on air before the rest of the group and began to head toward the surface. About halfway up, they felt like they were in a washing machine. They went down to 100 feet in seconds, and shortly after that they were on the surface wondering what happened. A few seconds after that, the rest of the group popped to the surface, similarly out of control. The boat crew took everyone to the chamber immediately as a precaution.