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  • 2012
Written by: Bob Diaz
Category: SpearBlog 2012
Fri13Jan2012

Foreword 2012

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Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2012 | January 12, 2012 | Print
foreword

Well it's hard to believe but another year is in the books. 2011 definitely passed in the blink of an eye. I guess it's true what they say... time does go by faster as you get older. I think it's yet another application of Einstein's theory of relativity. I believe that it goes by faster as you get older because the amount of time that passes is shorter relative to your age. When you were 10, a year was 1/10th of your life. At 50, it's a mere 1/50th so relatively speaking it's a hell of a lot shorter time span so it seems to go by faster for us as we age. I think back to something  my Dad told me on my 32nd birthday, "Today you're half my age. From here on in, you get closer!".

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Written by: Bob Diaz
Category: SpearBlog 2012
Wed23May2012

May 23, 2012 - Always a bridesmaid...

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Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2012 | May 23, 2012 | Print
bitch, complain, sidelined, waiting, hating, sucks

It's hard to believe that I haven't had an opportunity to jump in the water since my last blog on Dec 30th of last year. That's right, so long ago that I can actually refer to it as "last year". That's because you're allowed to refer to past events as happening "last week", "a few weeks ago", "a month ago", and even "a few months ago", but when your're 5 months removed from something, it's time to give up the ghost and call it what it is... "last year." Which makes you realize that this year is almost half gone and you're still dry and all your slings are starting to dry rot.

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Written by: Bob Diaz
Category: SpearBlog 2012
Mon4Jun2012

June 1-3, 2012 - A bunch of a whole lot of nothin'...

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Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2012 | June 04, 2012 | Print
crappy weather, no viz, first weekend, 2012

 

Seas:
 2-3 feet (Sat)
 1-2 feet (Sun)		 Winds:
 10-15 S/SW (Sat)
 10 S-SE (Sun)		 Viz:
 10-15 feet (Sat)
 40-50 feet (Sun)		 Temp:
 82 F (Sat)
 82 F (Sun)

I had been looking forward to this weekend for months. My first weekend of diving and spearfishing since last December. Unfortunately it started going a little awry about a week ago when my wife gave me the news that she and my daughter wouldn't be coming along due to some last minute sports team issues. I'm not sure, but it seems that organized sports aren't really very organized... Since it would be a father-son weekend, I decided to take the day off and pick him up from school and take off early for a little bonding time on the boat before everybody else got to the campground later that evening.

 

 It started out well enough. After loading up an entire car trailer with survival necessities (you know, golf cart, paddleboat, jet ski... just the bare essentials) that a friend would bring down for me that evening, we were on our way by 12:30p and in a couple of hours we were pulling in to the campground with boat in tow. This unfortunately is where things got grim.

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Written by: Bob Diaz
Category: SpearBlog 2012
Wed20Jun2012

June 16-17, 2012 - What next?!?!

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Bob Diaz | SpearBlog 2012 | June 20, 2012 | Print
broken a/c, electrical box, father's day
Seas:
2-3'		 Winds:
15-20 NE
dropping to 10-15 SE in the afternoon		 Viz:
30-35'		 Temp:
82F

"Third time's a charm", or so I thought... as I headed down for another shot at what would hopefully be my first "full" weekend of the Summer. With the boat in tow after working on it during the week to resolve fuel flow problems caused by the introduction of ethanol into our fuel supply (Thank you, big oil) I call ahead to have a friend turn on our A/C so temperatures are tolerable for our arrival. I get a call back a few minutes later letting me know that the A/C doesn't seem to be working. After a few minutes trying to do some telephonic troubleshooting, I decide whatever it is will have to await my arrival to get addressed, so in my usual devil-may-care way (NOT!) I sit back and start stewing the remainder of the drive.

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Bob Diaz - Wednesday, 21 December 2011 15:51

I realized recently that I had overlooked the fact that I had purchased and used some new SpearGear at the beginning of the Summer of 2011 and hadn't gotten around to posting about it (here or in SpearGear). This article is going to be one that definitely crosses over between SpearViews and SpearGear because of the fact that I do own it but I definitely think it's worthy of a review as well. In the end, SpearViews won the coin toss deciding where I would put the article (especially after I...

SpearViews

Bob Diaz - Saturday, 30 January 2010 08:18

I finally bit the bullet and decided to sell my No-Ka-Oi. It had gotten next to no use in the time I had owned it and it seemed a shame to have it just sit there so I Ebay'd it. With the funds from that sale, I invested in a gun that is a little more multi-purpose (at least that is how I convinced myself to get it :). I was extremely torn among 3 choices. I was considering the Euro 120, 120x and 130. After a couple of weeks of deliberation and a lot of flip-flopping, I decided on the Euro 120....

SpearViews

Bob Diaz - Tuesday, 06 May 2014 02:55

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...

SpearViews

Bob Diaz - Wednesday, 08 February 2012 16:32

{sigplus link=goprohero2 index=1} {/sigplus}I finally jumped on the HD bandwagon and bought myself a Hero2 HD digital camera by GoPro. These little beauties have been around for quite a while now so hearing about them isn't exactly news. But since I finally got around to purchasing one for myself and it happens to be that the Hero2 is the biggest leap in performance that they've given these cameras since their launch, I figured I would put in my 2 cents worth.

SpearViews

Bob Diaz - Thursday, 20 April 2017 01:50

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...

SpearViews

Bob Diaz - Thursday, 11 February 2010 20:57

Believe it or not my latest addition to my spearguns is not one for shooting fish (well at least not shooting to kill them). But it hopefully will help others watch online what I love to do underwater. I have made a camera mount for my Riffe Euro guns. This mount will fit on any Euro that has the reel inserts (basically all of them). It was terribly simple to make. The only fairly tricky part was putting together the actual mount screw for the camera tripod mount itself.

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SpearBlog 2005

Bob Diaz - Monday, 05 September 2005 15:07

Winds: 0-5 Seas: Less than 1 foot Surf Temp: 87F Viz: 20-25 feet Considering we had a hurricane pass through the area within the past 7 days, the water was not too bad. Viz was a solid 20-25 feet in most of the areas we dive. The fish were there, but nothing in the monster range. We had a solid day of shooting mangoes. The water was extremely flat so even my kid got to swim along with his old man while the rest of the family was on the boat. As my son gets older, I only hope he takes a healthy...

SpearBlog 2009

Bob Diaz - Monday, 07 September 2009 01:00

Seas: 2-4 feet (very sloppy) Winds: 15-25 Variable Temp: 86 F Viz: 50-60 feet We arrived Friday night to high winds and stormy skies and were worried that the weekend was getting off to a very rocky start. Unfortunately waking up the next morning to more of the same didn't exactly give us a lot of hope. We waited around most of the morning to see if the storms would finally clear up but it seemed as though the winds kept swirling with every storm front and kept the storms hanging around for a...

SpearBlog 2007

Bob Diaz - Monday, 16 July 2007 01:28

Winds: SE 5 Seas: 1-2 ft Surf Temp: 86 F Viz: 20-25 ft We had some very good weather this weekend (although the lack of wind does tend to make it extremely hot). We were able to easily head out for some diving and spearfishing without getting tossed around too much. Unfortunately we weren't seeing the same size mangroves that we were running into last weekend. That, and upon cleaning our catch from the first day, we noticed that a lot of the fish were no longer carrying roe. As long as they...

SpearBlog 2014

Bob Diaz - Monday, 09 June 2014 13:28

Wind Seas Viz Temp ESE 5mph 1-2' 40' 81F This past week started out looking very bleak. Storms rolled through the middle keys pretty much all day Monday and Tuesday with torrential downpours and winds in excess of 30mph. It was so bad in fact that people that had intended to stay the week decided to head for home and see how the week progressed from a distance. Between the wind that had picked up last weekend and the horrible weather at the opening of the week we pretty much thought that the...

SpearBlog 2010

Bob Diaz - Monday, 06 September 2010 19:31

Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 10 S/SE Viz: 35-50 feet Temp: 86 F All summer long, we've been suffering a grouper recession of sorts. This year was the first year of an experimental close on all shallow water grouper in Florida waters. Unfortunately, along with this closure, we also suffered the longest and coldest winter snaps in the spring that I can ever remember (and I'm born and raised here, so no need for me to check the almanac). This summer has been one of the oddest in recent and long term...

SpearBlog 2005

Bob Diaz - Sunday, 05 June 2005 15:04

Winds: 15-20 Sat, 5-10 Sun Seas: 2-4 Sat, 1-2 Sun Surf Temp: 83F Viz: 10-20 feet Things started out pretty ugly this weekend. Saturday was blowing a solid 15-20 mph from the East/SouthEas. We tried to make the best of it, but the wind and the seas made it less than hospitable. Sunday was thankfully a different story. The winds laid down completely and gave us a chance to get some diving in. The water was surprisingly clear considering the prior days conditiions. We were able to bag a few fish...