jadairiii
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Just Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii. Not that much. Funny though, they all shut down the motors. It must be a local thing?
Negative entry vs Using a downline
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Just Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii. Not that much. Funny though, they all shut down the motors. It must be a local thing?
Huh. Pretty cool! I'd like to dive that and see it in action. I get the concept wrt 1/3 etc and a torp vs a SMB.
Waterskiing! Yes as you described it, I now remember doing a drift off WestPalmBeach and the DM had a float, but she just flew by us underwater - in fact I thought it was highly dangerous as she couldn't stop and anyone in the way of the line or her was toast (at 100'). You would have thought a dive op would know better.
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Some of the Diveops have torpedoes...like JASA....but they are pricey.... Usually the DM has to be a hero and deal with the pull of a traditional float, no matter what....In practice, most days it is not so hard for most of the DM's to stop whenever the divers in their group want to stop--because of a photo op.....And, there are days when the current is smoking, and a smaller DM ( say a 135 pounder) is going to have to mostly just go with the flow, and the group will be following the DM....if the DM wants to stop, they use a hook and look for dead rock they can hit with it, then the group can do a photo op....and when done, the DM unhooks and they go as far as they like before hooking again.
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jadairiii
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Riffe's are bullet proof but I like the omer master, the center d-rings are nice "mid point" to attach the leash.
OMER - Master Torpedo Float
The Omer was yeah, ok, but the Riffe wow - that's one pricey flag holder...
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So now that you can see what we use the torpedo and drift dives for.....let's get to types of dives where this would be either stupid or not optimal...or also good...etc.
I have already made it clear that neither I nor any other drift diver I know would try to tow a torpedo in Kelp in a place like Catalina.
What I am talking about, would be dream vacation destinations anywhere in the world--in the ocean--not in caves.....
What are some of the cool places that some of you guys have experienced, that would get a Florida diver excited, and to desire to plan on for a future dive trip....but once there, this Florida diver would see that the "Drift Concept" could not work.
This is one of those, "Its hard to know what you don't know" things....I do know Palm Beach, Lauderdale, Miami, the Keys, Cayman, Puerto Rico, St Thomas, Tobago, the Bahamas, Fiji, Lake Erie, the low vis and big currents of Fort Pierce, Stuart and St Lucie, and some quarries like Tobermory in Canada, and some assorted north Florida caves. Obviously there are MANY environments I have never experienced....and many of you guys have....so all I am asking for is the mental picture that will help me understand the challenges in these environments that would prevent me from desiring to use the Drift technique if I had a captain willing to do what we would ask.
But I am talking about FUN places to go....not about your worst nightmares where you see less than 3 feet of vis as typical, and where there is only a tiny "port-o-potty" sized structure to find 100 feet down...
Places a dive tourist would want to spend money to travel to over all the other great options available. My proviso with this is that we did a very large number of tech dives in full drift off St Lucie and Fort Pierce, 25 miles out--where vis is rarely better than 15 or 20 feet, and can be 6 feet or 6 inches.....and in these wreck and structure drops in 3 to 5 mph currents, we would just drop quickly, and the structure would "come to us", and then we would begin our exploring and drifting, with the boat following. On the Pinacles dives I did with Craign Suavely off of St Lucie, the ones out around 25 miles would have 4 to 5 mph currents on them almost consistently---these would be over a 500 foot bottom and come up to as shallow as 200 feet at the top of the boob shaped pinacle..which would be covered in Oculina coral with it's own unique marine ecosystem... We could never have navigated to these in the 20 foot vis.....the boat would just have to estimate where to begin our drop trajectory. We would just have to get down to 190 or so quick, and then wait for something to come looming up toward us as we drifted toward it...the bottom all around would be more like 500 and essentially would appear as a bottomless area. My point is that I am hoping for more than just bad vis as being the reason that you guys KNOW that a drift dive technique would be stupid or impossible in one of these cool places you have, where line use is the BEST way to do the dive. Again, I am looking to know more about this, and potentially, to even visit one of these places in the future...But it would have to be "fun"
---------- Post added April 4th, 2014 at 10:31 AM ----------
I have already made it clear that neither I nor any other drift diver I know would try to tow a torpedo in Kelp in a place like Catalina.
What I am talking about, would be dream vacation destinations anywhere in the world--in the ocean--not in caves.....
What are some of the cool places that some of you guys have experienced, that would get a Florida diver excited, and to desire to plan on for a future dive trip....but once there, this Florida diver would see that the "Drift Concept" could not work.
This is one of those, "Its hard to know what you don't know" things....I do know Palm Beach, Lauderdale, Miami, the Keys, Cayman, Puerto Rico, St Thomas, Tobago, the Bahamas, Fiji, Lake Erie, the low vis and big currents of Fort Pierce, Stuart and St Lucie, and some quarries like Tobermory in Canada, and some assorted north Florida caves. Obviously there are MANY environments I have never experienced....and many of you guys have....so all I am asking for is the mental picture that will help me understand the challenges in these environments that would prevent me from desiring to use the Drift technique if I had a captain willing to do what we would ask.
But I am talking about FUN places to go....not about your worst nightmares where you see less than 3 feet of vis as typical, and where there is only a tiny "port-o-potty" sized structure to find 100 feet down...
Places a dive tourist would want to spend money to travel to over all the other great options available. My proviso with this is that we did a very large number of tech dives in full drift off St Lucie and Fort Pierce, 25 miles out--where vis is rarely better than 15 or 20 feet, and can be 6 feet or 6 inches.....and in these wreck and structure drops in 3 to 5 mph currents, we would just drop quickly, and the structure would "come to us", and then we would begin our exploring and drifting, with the boat following. On the Pinacles dives I did with Craign Suavely off of St Lucie, the ones out around 25 miles would have 4 to 5 mph currents on them almost consistently---these would be over a 500 foot bottom and come up to as shallow as 200 feet at the top of the boob shaped pinacle..which would be covered in Oculina coral with it's own unique marine ecosystem... We could never have navigated to these in the 20 foot vis.....the boat would just have to estimate where to begin our drop trajectory. We would just have to get down to 190 or so quick, and then wait for something to come looming up toward us as we drifted toward it...the bottom all around would be more like 500 and essentially would appear as a bottomless area. My point is that I am hoping for more than just bad vis as being the reason that you guys KNOW that a drift dive technique would be stupid or impossible in one of these cool places you have, where line use is the BEST way to do the dive. Again, I am looking to know more about this, and potentially, to even visit one of these places in the future...But it would have to be "fun" ---------- Post added April 4th, 2014 at 10:31 AM ----------
I have had mine for over 6 years though...they do last. The $50 ones can work fine...the advantage to the bulletproof Riffe floats is that they are so tough you can do alot more with them....they can be used to tie off tech gear to at the end of a tech dive, and with close to 200 pounds of lift, your gear won't sink, and the float won't tear with the intense weight of several sets of stages or doubles......As many of you guys are aware, if you have done an extreme profile, one of the most important parts of your deco is getting out of your gear while still in the water, and floating for another 15 minutes or so before climbing on to the boat...the Riffe Float makes this easy. The boat crew gets the gear out of the water in this case....for an extreme profile.....This is normally not required.
Surface markers are fine when going in the general direction of the current, but can be impractical when trying to remain in a certain area or needing to fight the current.
I've had situations when the engines were turned off and others when the engines were on, with the prop disengaged.
When it's possible to pick up divers quickly from the side of the boat, it's fine by me to have the engine on. And in some situations such as near rocks it may be safer. You don't want to find out you're having trouble restarting the engine when getting pushed towards the rocks.
Of course the skipper must be a trustworthy and knowledgeable person.
I've had situations when the engines were turned off and others when the engines were on, with the prop disengaged.
When it's possible to pick up divers quickly from the side of the boat, it's fine by me to have the engine on. And in some situations such as near rocks it may be safer. You don't want to find out you're having trouble restarting the engine when getting pushed towards the rocks.
Of course the skipper must be a trustworthy and knowledgeable person.
When I dove Catalina, with the Kelp, I had no desire or belief that my torpedo float would be viable.....But beyond the constant entanglement issue of kelp, in most other places I would consider traveling to....
If I was to travel to someplace with GREAT Diving....a place people would dream about diving....Please give me some of the scenarios/Destinations where towing the Torpedo float would be bad--that there would be good reasons for not doing it....I would hate to think that the big reason, was just that no one has ever tried it there before
I am "asking" this honestly, and NOT trying to attack anyone.
Cozumel, lots of areas in Belize, or any place where the coral reef towers high above the diver and where the diver is moving through complex structures. Your line will snag on the structures above, entangling you and damaging the coral. You will also not be able to enjoy any of the swim throughs.
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