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  • June 26-29, 2010 - Rough seas and dirty water
Written by: Bob Diaz
Category: SpearBlog 2010
Wed30Jun2010

June 26-29, 2010 - Rough seas and dirty water

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Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2010 | June 30, 2010 | Print
Seas: 5-8 feet Winds: 15-24E/SE Viz: 5-10 feet Temp: 83F

Well, they say that every cloud has a silver lining, but they always forget to mention how big the cloud may be or how far you need to look to find that so-called lining. Usually, I will be the first to tell people that my worst day spearfishing is still a great day diving but unfortunately this weekend has stretched my belief to the limit.

 

We went out Saturday morning to do some dolphin fishing and I was more than a little apprehensive because even at the tme we were going out the wind was already blowing 15-20 out of the South and my guess was that the seas were easily in the 5-6' range. Reports had the gulfstream 6 miles South of Sombrero light (which is only 11 miles offshore) so we decided to see if we could hit some dolphin. We actually ended up hitting more than a few schools, but everything we caught had to be measured and we threw back about 3/4 of what we landed. At least we ended up with some peanuts but we sure paid for it. Both my brother in law and I felt less than seaworthy by the end of the trip. On the way back we stopped at one of our shallower spots to see if we could dive. We ended up with about 5 snappers and the peanuts from the blue water. The really sad part of this story is that Saturday ended up being the best day so far. The wind has actually held up over the past few days and the seas have been a consistent 6' with even higher rollers.

June 29, 2010 - FII Certification Dive
June 29, 2010 - FII Certification Dive
June 29, 2010 - FII Certification Dive
June 29, 2010 - FII Certification Dive
So Tuesday our FII instructor came in and went out with us to do our certification dive for our Level I Freediving Course. Suffice it to say that half the people on the boat ended up yakking (including the instructor). We headed out about 7am trying to get some calmer seas before the sun rose too high and the wind started to kick in too much. We were in over 300' of water and hanging on to a dive buoy in 6-8' seas for well over an hour. We did the dive in two shifts because we didn't have a dedicated captain so we had to stay out there a little longer and the high seas started to bother more of us. By the time we were heading back, I think everyone was ready to head in.

We swung by one of our spots in about 48' of water on the way in to see how the viz was. I jumped in, dropped 20' and could recognize the bottom. So I dropped again, this time to 30' and I still couldn't even make out any of the bottom, so we called it a day. All this by 10:00am. At least I got my certification...

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