Before going out on your own in your father's boat, you ought to consider going out with one of the good charter operators first, so you'll get a good picture of what drift diving, properly done, is about.
www.puravidadivers.com hasn't been mentioned and is a good one in Palm Beach, on Fisher Island.
If you know about drift diving, skip the below. But if not, the real trick is keeping the boat above the drifting divers. The divers have to drift with the Gulf stream current, and the boat follows them, rather than anchoring. Usually this is done with a divemaster in the water trailing a surface buoy, the more foolproof method. Divers follow DM, boat follows buoy, so surfacing divers end up near the boat. The no-buoy method relies on the boat capt following bubbles, or having a good instinct where the drifting divers are, and having good eyes to spot them if they surface far away. Either way, divers should carry a marker buoy, surface sausage, whistle, signal mirror, and if diving late in the day, a personal strobe light.
In my limited experience, the West Palm Beach operators use the DMs and buoys, the Jupiter operators, who tend to cater to a bit more advanced clientelle, don't, they just look for you when you surface and signal "okay" to them, and you wait for them to get around to you.
So if you're new to diving, and your father (or whoever's going to be in the boat) is new to drift diving, take a look at the pros first is my suggestion.
