, not all high current dives are done on the drift. I know it is the general thing in WPB and SFla but drift diving is not the practice in many places. I have done many dives as I am sure you have as well where the boat is anchored over the site, Spiegal, Grove, Oriskany, Vandenberg, Flower Gardens Banks drops and many other places. The dive often requires a long swim/transit down an anchor rode which even set at a 4:1 scope, in 100 feet of water, that is a 400 foot swim, up current. Sure, once on the bottom or to the wreck one can use the structure to provide relief from the current as Net Doc suggests, good plan, as you make your dive up current to your turn point and then drift back. As well, I have encountered strong down currents in Coz, Caymans and a few other places.
Nemrod, this is kind of what I am going for with this comment....Like you, I have dived in many places outside of Palm Beach with real currents. Whether here, or in places like Fiji, I have found there are "certain things" that don't change, like the immutable laws of physics....One of these, is that if you really have a big current, then the BEST way to do the dive is from a Drift Dive boat ( non-anchored). My assumption is that the habitual anchor operators that do this with strong current areas, do it so they can run multiple groups at the same time, with no attempt to match bottom times or descent rates. It takes far less crew, it takes far less captaining skill, and it allows one boat to put EVERYONE on a shipwreck with no thought to much by the captain.
In contrast, a Palm Beach operator will need to make sure that all going down on a wreck dive on a day with a big current, descend at roughly the "normal" descent rate for divers....they need to know if there are any slow descenders( with ear issues), and if so, create a separate drop for them with a much longer lead upcurrent. Also, the captain needs to create some form of bottom time plan, IF there are any divers in the group that are using rebreathers or doubles, who might otherwise stay down 2 or more times as long as all other divers....meaning pickup will be affected by where these guys will drift to with long floating deco....this also involves their having their own float they can hook off, and then unhook and float with while doing deco.
None of this planning is hard, but it has to be done. The upcurrent dropping though, is a great skill--one where huge differences can exist between captains. One of the most amazing in Palm Beach is Lynn Simmons, captain of Splashdown...She got the reputation in the mid nineties, of having a near magical ability to drop any diver exactly on anything. She could estimate each divers descent speed, and figure top current, mid currents, and bottom currents, and know when to drop divers to get them right where they would want to be....Even before GPS, I remember Lynne telling me once when we were 2 miles from shore...."Dan, when I tell you to dive, jump in annd swim straght down fast, when you hit bottom look stright to the left( south), and you will see a cave with a huge jewfish....this was 90 feet deep, with a 2 mph current...And I did look left and see the Jewfish in the cave
Lynne was also famous for tech drops. One of the hardest was/is the Skycliffe...While only 225 feet deep, it gets more gulfstream intrusion than the deeper wrecks, and far more eddy effects....Lynne would ask George Irvine, Bill Mee and myself, where on the ship we would like to land...she knew exactly how fast we would descend, and could drop us right on a wheelhouse if that is what we wanted. All of us found this amazing.
Since all the boats in Palm Beach do these current drops every day, all good captains stay...all bad captains are short lived....bad ones will need to move to still water dive location areas.
I see this boat and captain selection issue just like I see "gear selection" and buddy selection for a dive.
When Sandra and I dove in Fiji in big currents, I could not get them to learn drift diving boat operation just for me...so we adjusted our diving accordingly....it was incredibly fun diving, and certainly not taxing for either Sandra or me to anchor dive in the large currents--but we knew there was a much better way that the dives could be run. If we "moved there", we would work with a boat untill they drifted these sites the way they should.
In the Keys or other areas, choosing the boats SHOULD BE a big issue in how you handle currents in a smart way. The more currents bother you, the more you want a captain skilled in drift techniques. However, the better you are in high current diving, the more you will be pissed about a captain with the defective anchoring practices.
, I think I had one of those lazy a** captains recently in WPB, I got blown off the line, my excuse, I do not trust my 4,000 plus dollar camera to my lanyard which limited my ability to hand over hand down the rode as the captain suggested.
I know of no boats in Palm Beach that anchor without specific demands to do this by a group unwilling to do a drift....Please either tell me the name of this boat here, or PM it to me. I use all the major boats in Palm Beach, and am shocked to hear something like this....
But on topic I have used the Atomic Smoke fins as a try out a couple of years ago for several days. I found them at least as fast against current, in fact faster in my opinion, than my Jets for a given effort. They also frog kicked quite well but the Jet is still champ there. Yep, I need to get me some of those free diver fins to try out, will start studying on them.
N
I would not disagree at all...Jets are great at slow to medium flutter kick, and for all frog kicks, and great at reverse kicks, helicopters, etc. Jets get to be very inefficient at high speeds, even for an elite athlete they are the wrong tool for high speed flutter kicking. For this, in a scuba length fin, I have found Excellerating Force Fins to be the most efficient by a huge margin....For open water reef diving, where huge long blades will not interfere with a tight overhead penetration, then I like the carbin fiber hybrid , very long bladed DiveR freediving fins the most, though the excellerating Force fins are a close second even here. Unlike the DiveR's, the Excellerators can be used by a diver that is not an elite level athlete, as they utilize muscles everyone uses, and dont require as much brute strength as the big stiffer carbon fiber freedive fins will.
