Drift Dive - Lousy drop - what do you do?

[hammet]

I've done lots of SE Florida drift diving with various dive ops but ran into an tough situation a few days ago.
I was on a boat that I've been on a few times before with a boat driver who I've also been with a few times. I was instabuddied with an older gentleman who I never met before, but he seemed reasonably experienced and fit. Long story short, we got dropped on the west side of the reef where the current seemed to go west. Uh-oh.
I was carrying the flag which bobbed on the surface so I led. I tried heading north for a few minutes but wasn't making much progress... tried south and managed to go a little better, but we still struggled stay on the reef. I looked at my buddy who seemed not too concerned that we were moving ever so slowly despite the fact that I was also fighting with the flag on the surface which constantly tried to pull me further west away from the reef. I decided to stick out the dive and we still managed to get just under an hour (both of us had HP100s) despite the fact that I was sucking air to keep over the reef. We didn't cover much real estate and it was a less than optimal dive.

I thought about going to the surface and asking to get re-dropped several times but my concerns were:

1. Coming up from 60' feet or so, we would still need to make a slow ascent and safety stop thus using more gas. And who know how far away the boat would be by the time it realized we were on the surface. Then we'd have to get on the boat and get re-dropped.
2. Would the current shift in our favor or be slightly blocked if we managed to make it to a part of the reef where we could swim in the lee of a ledge?
3. I wasn't sure if my buddy really felt the need. What was he thinking? He didn't have the flag pulling him so he seemed to be more relaxed. It was hard to communicate what I was thinking underwater especially with someone I never dove with before so I never really tried other than a 'I dunno' signal with both palms turned upward.

In retrospect, I would've headed up since on the second dive, I learned my buddy sips air like me. We did almost 75 minutes on a much more pleasant second dive.

Interested if any of you have had similar experiences.

 

[northernone]

If I drop in and the current has another idea for the direction that day, if it is a safe one, I go with it. Hardly ever had a bad dive that way. If I'm with someone we plan both ways.

Coming back up immediately is an option too, but generally for me not worth the work of getting relocated.

 

[Ana]

The beauty of drift dives carrying a flag is that the flag is the navigator. Depending on the strength of the current you could obviously go on a different direction, but why? If you run out of reef, keep going there's plenty of magic in the sand adjecent to reefs n many times there's another patch of reef close by.
Also I don't see the person carrying the flag as the leader, flag carrier is the diver with less chances to get run over by a boat while on the surface.

 

[hammet]

If I drop in and the current has another idea for the direction that day, if it is a safe one, I go with it. Hardly ever had a bad dive that way. If I'm with someone we plan both ways.

Coming back up immediately is an option too, but generally for me not worth the work of getting relocated.

If we drifted west with the current, we would have been taken off the reef and over acres of uninteresting sand.

 

[hammet]

The beauty of drift dives carrying a flag is that the flag is the navigator. Depending on the strength of the current you could obviously go on a different direction, but why? If you run out of reef, keep going there's plenty of magic in the sand adjecent to reefs n many times there's another patch of reef close by.
Also I don't see the person carrying the flag as the leader, flag carrier is the diver with less chances to get run over by a boat while on the surface.

The reefs in SE florida run North/South. If you drift off the reef you are over nothing but sand on the west side and deeper sand on the east side.

I always figured the guy with the flag is the leader for the simple fact that he/she is the person you want to be with if you have hopes of being tracked on the surface and getting picked up. The boat is not necessarily looking for a single SMB that may have separated from the other dropped divers. When I'm diving with a 'instabuddy' carrying the flag, I make sure not to get separated and if I'm doing something like pulling out a lobster and the person with the flag starts getting too far away, I'll quit what I'm doing to stay together because I know the flag makes it hard for that person to hold position against the current.

 

[Ana]

I see magic in the sand around the reefs, a couple of weekends ago the current was taking me south west which is not typical because it tends to go mainly north (between 350 and 020). Ended in a field of live conchs with a few dead sanddollars in between. Had a great time.

I don't mind drifting east as long as the bottom doesn't slope deep to drastically, if the depth is within my planned envelope I'm going with it.

 

[Johnoly]

... I looked at my buddy who seemed not too concerned that we were moving ever so slowly ....

Sounds like you did everything right. If the buddy was antsy, it's never a problem to change leaders underwater and give him the flag with you following. I've requested the flag away from leaders who were clearly going in the wrong direction. Follow the fish, they don't lie (except when it's to find lobster )

 

[boulderjohn]

I had a couple of bad drops in SE Florida last winter, and it is frustrating. I would love to tell you what to do, but...

On 95% of the drift dives I have done there (and I have done many), we have dropped on top of the reef and told to head west once we descend. We descend on a landscape of sponges (etc.), head west, and pretty soon come to a clear edge of the reef. We then head either south or north, depending upon the current, and everything is hunky dory. Easy-peasy. Never a problem.

On the two dives in question, with an operator I don't normally use, we were told we were dropping right on the edge of the reef. Period. We dropped and did not see anything like a defined edge of the reef. With no clear idea what to do, we zigzagged around, looking for something that looked like the familiar edge of the reef, Nothing.

Each time that happened, it was our fault--at least according to the captain. We should have looked at the lay of the land and then decided whether we needed to go east or west to find the edge of the main reef. With only a few hundred dives on those reefs, I just didn't have that kind of skill, so we missed it each time.

 

[hammet]

John,
Agreed that almost all the time the current is predominately north/south. In fact, during the second dive a few minutes away, the current was clearly north. That was one reason why I kinda thought the west current was just an isolated local phenomena and swimming for a few minutes either north or south would put me in a north or south drift. It turned out not to be temporary and because we were fighting to keep east, we weren't making much headway north or south.

 

[scubadada]

@hammet
Hi Andrew,

Where were you, Boynton, or some place else?

I have had dives when wind and/or current pulled strongly west, off the reef. Not much you can do but swim east. It often seems to help by increasing the line out on your flag. I have found that by hanging in for a while the conditions eventually improve. I have also had the opposite, with a strong pull east, makes it difficult, particularly on the outside.

I have been on dives when all but the strongest swimmers have been pulled off the reef and had to be re-dropped or bagged it. Sounds like you did OK and made the best of it.

Will you be diving in Sept for GG aggregation?

Best, Craig