I have soloed off my own boats since I was a kid. You need to know the waters, check your anchor equipment and limit your exploration to up current and insight of your anchor line.
The Panhandle area of Florida has a lot of artificial reefs, bridge rubble reefs, odds and ends like culverts and old steel, actual wrecks, some natural "live" rock and lot's of open sand. The customary wreck anchor is a re-bar grapple.
I usually use a grapple (wreck hook) or a Fortress, I dive from a 19 foot boat, I use a 16 foot chain, hand spliced anchor rode. I don't run out 5X depth and all of that BS for a simple, temporary wreck tie-in in benign conditions, 2X is plenty.
I don't solo offshore farther than I can swim back to shore, I can swim a long, long way, I carry self rescue equipment plus sausage, spools, mirrors, dye etc in a small pocket.
I would think nothing, an example, of solo diving from my little boat on the Tug Louise out of Destin in barely 50/60 feet of water, about a mile or so from shore, heck, I have shore dived it that site. On the other hand, I would not head out 26 miles to the Timberholes in 120 feet of water for a solo dive. There I would leave my wife aboard, done, did, will do again.
If you are worried about somebody thinking your anchored boat, with a fleet of dive falgs on it, trailing line with flag, and a note on the panel that you are scuba diving below with date and time might be abandoned then you might be a bit paranoid and if somebody is going to steal it, well, swim for shore, it is good exercise.
I would get some good knowledge of the area, dive it with locals a bunch, get familiar with area weather, boating customs etc and ease into it.
Yeah, it is always better to leave your wife up top or a boat watcher.
I think sometimes some folks confuse private boating with commercial dive/charter businesses.
N
she jumped in. We started to decend on the anchor line only to get to 75' with the anchor drifting along off the bottom by 10' lol. I swam up and was able to un-cleat the line drop a bunch more down and we found a new little site. Now of course if the current was heavy we could have been in a big situation. This could have been avoided by knowing how to anchor a boat correctly to begin with.
and my sister was having some ear issues. When she tried to ascend she was having a reverse squeeze and was not able to come up. We were only 25' deep and I could see the hull just disappearing in the back ground...she eventually got her ear worked out and we ascended and had a long swim back in the current to the boat. This could have been avoided by using the anchor line to ascend and descend like we should have to begin with.
