DIVE RITE Primary Sidewinder Reel 250′ with #36 Line
North Florida cave diver, Woody Jasper, first invented sidewinder-style reels around 1980. Less likely to entangle than other reels on the market, Woody’s original reel was made of aluminum and a PVC spool. The side-handle style of the reel lent itself to exploration because it could easily switch from hand to hand while laying out line. Twenty years later, sidewinder-style reels were popularized in the technical diving community when DIR enthusiasts began using them for paying out line in deep caves at high speed on a DPV. Our Sidewinder series of reels are designed to be anti-jam by using precision machine tolerances between the frame and the spool making it nearly impossible for the line to slip between the spool and the handle