Wreck Drift Dive Safety Briefing

There are a number of drift dives at various depths that can be completed offshore at Eastbourne. Drift dives are available on the flood or ebbing tide with the tide providing drifts up to 2 to 3 knots in speed.

The drift dive will be tailored to suit your required dive profile example:

Wreck dive followed by Drift dive, if wreck is 30m then drift will be less than 30m.

Drift Dive followed by Wreck dive, if drift 22m then the wreck dive will be the same depth 22m.

We offer 2 types of drift dive:

Reef Drift Dive

Skills required: Descending and Ascent using a Surface Marker Buoy (SMB).

Wreck Drift Dives

Skills required: Deploy Surface Marker Buoy (SMB) from seabed and ascend.

With this type of dive the:

  1. Divers are deployed up tide of the wreck
  2. Descend as quickly as possible to the seabed
  3. Drift towards the wreck.
  4. On contact with the wreck, the diver moves over the wreck to be in the lee of the tide.
  5. When the diver leaves the wreck, or if they miss the wreck they deploy their SMB from the seabed
  6. Proceed as a normal drift dive ascent.

The reason behind the delayed deployment of the SMB on a wreck drift dive is that it is easier for the diver to locate and move to the lee of the wreck without a deployed SMB pulling them off the wreck. As the boat knows where the wreck is there is only a requirement to deploy an SMB once the diver leaves the wreck to ascend or carry on with a normal drift dive, so that the boat can follow.

Drift Dive Kit:

Each diver must have an SMB, Reel, Whistle and Torch
Why Whistle and Torch?  In the event that Fog should occur unexpectedly, each diver will have an audio and visual aids to hand to aid location. See Link for Fog Drill.

Why each diver must have an SMB and Reel, in the event there is a miss launch with one SMB (pair of divers) they will have a backup. Also if dive pair becomes parted each diver will have their own SMB to surface with.

Note: Most new wings and stab jackets appear to be sold without whistles