My wife and I did one drift dive so far, It was in Cozumel area. The Dm did not use a float, at least not one at the start, I do not know about at the end cause we got seperated, not a good thing.
As the dive got near the end my wife was posssitive boiyent. Fighting to stay down. the DM pointed up to all of us and she stoped kicking down. Once she was pointed up it was a nonstop trip to the surface. I grabed her fin and slow the accent up. adding as much drag as i good. Once on the surface I noticed no one else was comming up. It was quite choppy that day. 3-4 swells. I still had plenty or air left but wife was under 1000 PSI. I went down about 15 feet to see if I could see the group. No sign of them anywhere. So I went back to the surface to stay with dive buddy, After about 4-5 min of bobbing around in the seas I spoted the boat a ways off, By this time we had been thinking about the movie "Open Water" as we could not see shore or any boats at all. With our BC's inflated we just started kicking. We made it to the boat after about 5-10 min. 70% of the PPL where already on the boat. Not one person said a word about us swimming to the boat. I don't recall a head count after boarding the boat either.
From that day on my wife does not like dive boats, Does not trust the boat or the crews.
A few years later we did our first shore dive, Big island of Hawaii, (location 2 step) She loved it and stated that she can not wait till we can dive on our own without the Dive boat BS.
What this all boils down to, is that there certainly should be a better way, and keep in mind that many operations are shoty at best.
Highflier
PS. this is a good example of why you stay with your buddy, It truely would have been terrifing to be in that situation alone. Not to mention I barely saw the Dive boat am not sure she would have spoted it, causee you could only see it when you where on top of the current wave.
PSS. now wife uses a few more LBS of weight when she is diving.