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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...
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...
{sigplus link=oculusr5 index=1} {/sigplus}Hot on the heels of my review of the GoPro Hero2, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't follow up with a review of the case that resolves the one (and only one in my opinion) flaw in the Hero2 design, it's underwater focus (or lack thereof) flaw. You see, as I wrote about in the Hero2 review the curved lens on the stock case creates a focus fallacy when shooting underwater. It's fairly common knowledge now, so if you want to read about it, you can check...
This year at The Blue Wild I was fortunate enough to meet Mike Hickey. I know of Mike from his appearances on Speargun Hunter on the Outdoor Channel with Sheri Daye. Mike was orginally a guest on the show and in later seasons participated as an underwater videographer. Mike is the USA distributor for FreeDivers ( FreeDivers USA ) spearfishing equipment. I came across his booth and after a great conversation about spearfishing, we started discussing the rising cost of spearshafts specifically....
The summer had been busier than I would have liked this year and I honestly hadn't had as many opportunities to post much less given much thought to writing a new SpearView, but after having time to really reconsider, I realized that I had actually had multiple opportunities to try out new equipment this year (not all of it successfully). Further to that point, when I took the PFI Freediver course back in March I had decided to invest in a new mask and ended up deciding on the Omer Zero Cubed...
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.
I'm not going to lie to you, I got a little lazy and didn't track any of my weather stats this weekend. Diving, cleaning fish and cooking start to take their toll on you and you get to the point where all you want to do is get some sleep instead of being responsible and entering your blog. Then again, I probably tell more people about our goings-on these weekends than actually read them here... Opening day of lobster season! What a madhouse!!! The really interesting part (and by interesting, I...
Winds: 20-25 east (Sat)/5-10 east (Sun) Seas: 3-5 feet (Sat) / 1-2 feet (Sun) Surf Temp: 78F Viz: 10-15 feet (inshore) / 40+ feet (offshore) Unfortunately, this was another weekend without the advent of pictures of fish. The problem we run into is that the best day of the past few weekends has been Sunday and in efforts to take full advantage, we end up rushing to clean fish and just don't have time to stop and take pics. We didn't really slaughter them this weekend, but we did have some...
Winds: 10-15 E Seas: 2-3 feet Surf Temp: +/- 82F Viz: 5-10 feet Got a little bit of a late start on Saturday. Thinking high tide was coming early in the morning, we decided to target the afternoon low tide. Unfortunately the charts were off by a couple of hours and in addition to passing up high tide for no good reason, we ended up swimming against an outgoing tide for about an hour and a half before getting a break. The viz was terrible at its best and most of the time you couldn't even see...
Winds: 5-10 South Seas: 1-2 feet (maximum) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-40 feet Another beautiful weekend in paradise. The winds were mild and the temperatures hot! We dove some of our preferred patch reefs this weekend. We knew it was still a little early to catch those large mangroves we love so much, but we just couldn't resist. We only took a few, but they were choice! We even got a couple of nice mackerels. As long as you arrived before the tide line, the water was pretty clear... green,...
Even though I have had a few chances to take the boat out this winter, my spearfishing frustrations continue. The past couple of weekends have given me a chance to take the family out for wonderful days out on the boat, but being the only spearfisherman on the boat presents constant challenges. I did dive this past weekend, but there wasn't much to be seen and when I started to scout for some new locations (since I never dive in Miami and fishermen hoard their spots like women hoard pairs of...
Winds: 10-15 SE Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 25-60 feet Saturday was pretty much a wash for me due to the fact that I had to pull an all nighter on Friday and didn't get to show up on Saturday until about 3:30 in the afternoon. But after downing 6 or 7 beers and laying down early to get a full night's rest that night, I hoped Sunday was the beginning of a better weekend. Unfortunately, I was wrong, my brother-in-law was sick with a flu so it made it a little hard to get him...