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...
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....
{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...
It didn't take me long to finish rigging up the 120 with a new reel and 2.2mm dyneema line. Unfortunately as of now (Apr 2009), I haven't had an opportunity to get into the blue water to put this new toy through its paces. I am definitely jones'ing to give it a try! I am also working on making my own flashers for use in blue water. I have been watching these being used on a few spearfishing shows and their reasoning seems sound for their success. They didn't seem too hard to make, so I decided...
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...
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...
{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.
Seas: 2-3 feet Winds: 5-10 SW Temp: 82 F Viz: 10-15 feet This was a real good news/bad news weekend which sort of makes it a fitting sequel to last weekend. Fact is, the viz was even worse this weekend and it got worse from Saturday to Sunday as well. We headed out Saturday for a late morning patch reef dive so we could kill time until the 4:30p high slack tide, hoping it would be clean. We headed to a spot that had been productive recently in about 30 feet of water. Upon getting there we...
Wind Seas Viz Temp NNE 10-15mph 2-3' falling to 1-2' 20-25' 80F Another year begins without an early opportunity for a foreword... As I get older (and grumpier) it seems like I get to do what I want less and less. That's not to say that what I do (soccer tournaments, band competitions, college days, work - ugh, etc) is less important or even that I would change it if I could (not all the time anyway), but these landlocked activities and responsbilities definitely encroach on the time that I...
Winds: 5-10 east (morning) 15-20 east (afternoon) Seas: 2-3 (morning) 3-4 (afternoon) Surf Temp: 77F Viz: 35 feet Trying to take advantage of a lull in the spring winds, we headed out at about 8:00am. The day looked like it was going to shape up nicely. The forecast had predicted 5-10 in the morning with 15-20 in the afternoon. The winds had laid down for a couple of days and we decided to see if it had allowed the local waters to clear up some. We headed out of Key Biscayne from the Bay into...
Seas: 3-7 feet Winds: 20-25 E/SE Viz: 25 feet Temp: 81 F There really isn't much to write about this weekend as it was yet another weekend spent holding or weighing down everything from the tablecloth to your plate once you had eaten more than half the food on it. As for the forecast this weekend, I'm not going to split hairs with the meteorologists. They forecast 15-20 E/SE and I'm reasonably sure the wind was considerably stronger than that (I honestly believe 20-25mph with frequent 30mph...
Winds: 10-15 E Seas: 2-4 feet (sloppy) Surf Temp: +/- 80F Viz: 15-50 feet (depending on location) We decided to play the tide game today and actually won! The last couple of weeks we were either busting our humps because we got to our spots too early (running into strong tides), or missed the boat altogether and still end up busting our humps in order to catch some fish in spite of missing the slack tide (this of course precludes the fact that we would still run offshore to some of our patch...
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.