"Drift diving" definition

[Sas]

By some of the definitions here nearly all of my dives inside the local bay would be drift dives... I dive in slackwater off a live boat, but slack has usually ended before I am ready to come up so all of my stops are done drifting on an DSMB and the boat comes to pick me up. Even if slackwater has not ended I rarely surface on the shotline and just pop up an SMB as the boat will come get me. I find it a pain diving off anchored boats now on holidays, given I actually have to navigate

However, I generally only see drift dives as dives done outside of slackwater. Sometimes this is done on a float line (which I loathe, with up to 8 on a line it gets ugly fast) or else me and my buddy drift along with an DSMB up, or we just put one up at the end of the dive.

Bob, I actually thought of the possibility of a "toilet bowl"-like, swirling current before I made the post, but I had never heard of a site suitable for diving that could be counted on for such a unique current. Thanks to your post, now I have.

Yea the currents can be like that local to me also, especially near walls. I was doing a drift dive on the weekend in crazy current and we hit one point where it was like a toilet bowel and everyone but me and my buddy got separated, and no one was able to stay on the float line. I sent up an SMB and the current was so strong it pushed my SMB under the water so it was horizontal to me with all my line out.... Same thing happened to the dive float.

 

[noreastDIVER84]

Bob, I actually thought of the possibility of a "toilet bowl"-like, swirling current before I made the post, but I had never heard of a site suitable for diving that could be counted on for such a unique current. Thanks to your post, now I have.

I really need to get up there and dive the PNW. It sounds fantastic.

I dive a spot near my house that is just off the inlet. I swim out alongside a pipeline to a marker that on it. I then "drift" with the incoming slack tide towards two bridges, then have anywhere from 5-20 minutes of time where there is no current. The tide then starts to go out, and brings me back to the pipeline that I swam out on, and I can then swim back in to the point where I entered the water.

In short I "drift" to and from the same entry and exit point when I dive this location.

I attached an aerial of the site and marked out how the drift works in that site. The green marking is what I can generally cover when doing that site as a drift. I have swam straight out under the bridges and worked with the current as well, but I prefer it as a drift dive.