![]()
Another long overdue edit, but what can I say? Life continues to get in the way of my hobbies...
More things for you to see...
![]()
Another long overdue edit, but what can I say? Life continues to get in the way of my hobbies...
Back in March of 2010 I enrolled in and completed the FII Level One freediving course . I was extremely happy with the course content and the outcome (check out the SpearView ). Unfortunately for me, I'm not a professional freediver, so as with many people, life gets in the way and complicated which in turn keeps you from building a true regimen that reinforces all the good behavior learned in the course. Needless to say, I forgot some of the basics, fell back into many of my old bad habits...
Over the winter I looked into and purchased a couple of sets of Reef Runner Gear's fin skins. I had contemplated having my own manufactured but when I came accross these, it just didn't seem worth the hassle. You can create your own custom design for a few bucks more and although you can run into some small snags when doing so (I'll elaborate later on), Jon from Reef Runner Gear is an awesome guy to work with and he will do everything he can to make things right.
After trying and being disappointed by the Omer Zero Cubed mask last year, I picked up a couple of other masks ( Mares Star and Sporasub Mystic ) that fit fairly well and did not disappoint, but were not the perfect fit I've been looking for in a low volume freediving mask so I didn't feel overly compelled to write a spearview about them. In defense of these masks, they are both low volume masks that are relatively inexpensive so for the money they are great purchases. Of these two, the...
Over the weekend of March 27 th & 28 th I took the Level 1 Freediving course offered by FII (Freediving Instructors International) at their Headquarters in Pompano Beach FL. FII was started by Martin Stepanek, a multiple time freediving world record holder. The Level 1 curriculum is taught over a 2 day course. The first day is classroom and pool based and spans almost 9 hours. This course is designed for beginning freedivers and is supposed to get novice divers to a depth of 66 feet.
This review is actually long overdue as I've had this mask for well over a year now and I honestly don't know why I hadn't done it before now. After trying multiple masks over several years (and several hundred dollars), some were good (Mystic, Star, Nano), and some were bad (Zero Cubed). Before this, I had actually decided upon the Cressi Nano as "the one". I thoroughly enjoyed the fit and volume of the Nano, but there were a couple of VERY minor issues with the fit. I'm convinced that the...
This past weekend, I finally got to go to The Blue Wild dive expo. After 3 years of everybody telling me about it and not being around to get to go to it, the stars finally aligned and I was able to check it out. Unfortunately, it meant missing out on 5-10mph winds and less than 1' seas inside the reef, but there were other reasons I couldn't get out this weekend, so I figured I would take advantage to check it out and possibly win something from the raffle to boot (I won't keep you in...
I got an email from my brother in law and at first reading, I wasn't really sure why he sent it to me or why I should pay extra attention to it. The email had a link to an article on the FWC site about a Pompano and African Pompano video workshop that the FWC was scheduling. We don't get a lot of Permit family fish because they are protected in state waters and we don't do a lot of federal water spearfishing, so at first glance I thought, "Who cares..."
Winds: 5-15 East Seas: 3-5 feet Surf Temp: 81 F Viz: 5-10 feet Today we headed out to the offshore patch reefs. It was a rough ride, and unfortunately the water didn't clear up for us at all. We dove in depths from 25-32 feet and we were able find some fish to shoot, but it wasn't an easy task. When we finally found them, we had to dive pretty much all the way to the bottom, just to find them. Then you had to take advantage and shoot what you saw or could chase in one breath. There wasn't any...
Winds: (Saturday) Southerly 30-40 (with incessent rain) Seas: (Saturday) Extreme chop, 5-6 (for as far as the eye could see) Surf Temp: (yeah, like I was going to find out) Viz: (Not sure, but if I had to guess, 2-3 inches) Another weekend of crappy weather. This seems to have been going on forever now. Winds were blowing 30-40 mph almost straight out of the south. The seas were milk. We had whitecaps in the marina! Needless to say, all we did was fix the boat (from last week's difficulties),...
Winds: (Saturday) 2-5 Variable Seas: (Saturday) 2-3 inside the reef, 2-3 outside the reef Surf Temp: +/- 84 F Viz: 25-30 feet Unfortunately, due to some mechanical difficulties, we were only able to dive Saturday morning, but the morning was very nice. High tide was at about 10:30am, and we were about an hour early. We fought the incoming tide for about 30 minutes before it started to slacken up. After that we got a good 45 minutes of slack tide, where we were really able to make up some...
Wind Seas Viz Temp E-SE 18-24mph 4-6' 5-15' 79F The excitement for grouper opening started a few weeks ago when my brother in law and I started discussing our plans. There was talk of scouting on Sunday and taking Monday through Wednesday off to maximize our time on the water. We would connect with our friends Lazaro and Chris and we were hopeful that we would have a good opening like last year. As usual, we talked timing, accommodations and weather forecasts. After talking about it for about...
Winds: 5 west Seas: less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 79F Viz: 35 feet Thank goodness that weathermen (or weatherpersons, don't want to be sexist) don't know shit from shine! The weather reports for this weekend would have had you believe that it wasn't even worth going out this weekend, but this was one of the nicest calmest days, in recent weeks. As we headed out the flag on the campground pole was barely flapping so we hauled ourselves out to some of our favorite closer spots and jumped right in.