Posts by Dan

I tried it in the store. It was one of the top 3 snorkels I was considering buying. It's pretty good but there's no way in hell I'm paying $50 for a snorkel.

I'll second that, 5/8 (16mm) bands will fit into 9/16 (14mm) holes, just use a little dishwashing detergent and pull hard.

Dave, I really recommend to you to try the system with replaceable wishbones. This way you can insert the band in a solid hole, which doesn't weaken the muzzle, and connect the wishbone afterwards. The only catch is that you have to tie your own bands. My experience has been that wishbones go bad before the band so doing it this way make more use out of the bands.

Very cool video, thanks Anthony. I always wondered what speafishing in Trinidad and Tobago is like. I really enjoy when spearfishing vids show something of a different culture and lifestyle as opposed to simply shooting fish Those fish stands remind me of what I've seen in the Bahamas. Over there they don't refrigerate the fish either, that's how the people know the fish are fresh. They must sell out by the end of every day.

The powerheads will fit 7mm and 9/32 diameter shafts.

Anyone remembers Cameron Kirkconnell shooting Steve Bennet's fin to save him after his blackout? Who remembers Cameron's rigging? I'm pretty sure that if Cameron had a reel Steve Bennet would be dead.

Quote

Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 08:33:57
Subject: Steve
Sad but rewarding story from yesterday diving. I am going to write it all out in full but am stil la bit shook up and need to help out his family in the hospital today.
Was diving in 180 ft of water with a friend Steve Bennet who is a 21 year old from Tarpon Springs. We were diving on an area of broken bottom in strong current from an anchored boat. Making one dive down and getting swept away each time before swimming back to the boat and resting to make another
he dove to down and was on his way back to the surface, I watched and he looked fine and regretfully left the surface myself and headed down. I dove and while I was down at 75 ft his gun floated past me,
i immediately looked around and saw my friend upside down drifting unconcious and convulsing about 60 ft away at that same depth.
With a strong current and no one else in the water and one chance I ditched my weight belt and swam hard towards him extending the gun to shoot him. I was well past my breath hold limit and knew that there was no point of us both dying but there was only this once brief glimmer of hope to even get his body. I couldn't get close enough to be confident of penetrating his meat in his leg shooting him in the fin
headed for the surface and was as close as I have ever been to blacking out in my life. before the dive, by pure luck we had secured my gun to a huge fishing reel on the boat in anticipation of me shooting a 100 lb Cubera snapper which we had seen at depth.
I screamed for the boat to cut the anchor line, reel up my gun because it had Steve on it.
Suffice to say despite my yelling of orders and trying to tell them quickly that steve had drown and we were about to have to perform CPR on him they had no idea the gravity of the situation.
we pulled him to the boat and he was completely limp, bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears and was completely blue.
I put him on the back of the boat and checked his vitals immediately found a faint pulse and no breathing. From freedive and medical training, opened his airway while talking confidently and softly to him and blowing lightly across his cheeks just under his his to trigger the breathing reflex like a new born. within the first minute and just before I was going to start rescue breaths, some foamy blood leaked from the side of his mouth and i turned him on his side and supported him so as to ease the flow of fluid from his lungs.
a short while later he sputtered a bit and was able to take in what i would estimate was a 1% capacity breath.
20 seconds later he made another one and expelled more foamy blood from his mouth and nose. with each sputter he expelled more and within 10 minutes he could take about a 15% breath but was still completely unresponsive and from what i could see in a comatose state with only his body barely functioning.
The whole time we are on the radio with the coast guard and are 70 miles off shore.
After 15 minutes he started to slurr and for the first time was able to squeeze my hand slightly letting me know that he could hear me.
From there i sat him in my arms and over the next 20 minutes as we sped in as fast as the boat would go he regained more and more motor functions and was able to talk more and more. 45 minutes from the time it happened and still 55 miles off shore we rendezvous with a coast guard helicopter and airlifted him to Tampa General hospital.
He has severe lung damage but is alive and has no noticeable brain damage. He is stable and will live a lot happier having not been shot in the leg or having sunk to 180 feet never to be seen again. The best shot I have ever made
This is the single heaviest thing that was ever happened to me or any diver I've ever talked to. Throughout the ordeal if i was looking at it from the outside i would have told anyone with a 99% certainty there was no chance he would ever regain conciousness or be able to be recovered from that depth or the fin would have stayed on or the second diver would have been able to get him or the fin dould not have split. Once in the boat... the worst sight I've ever seen. NO one should be able to live through that. the human body is an amazing thing and that he came back is a miracle.
Thank your lucky stars tonight because it is possible for everything to align perfectly and work out sometimes
Cam

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Quote from sdeisen

well to look at it that way we should all be free shafting, bit im really nervous about the HIV virus.. really though that kind of danger is inherent when using any type of set up other than no set up at all.

It may seem that way to you but the various situations we've been in over many days diving are very real. It depends on the different conditions you encounter which may include one or all of the following; depth, current, bad visibility, type of bottom, fish size and what it will tend to do after shot etc.

Consider this situation that happened to Gonzo. We were drift diving in strong current in about 50ft over pretty flat reef bottom. Gonzo shot at a fish and missed, the shaft simply lay on the bottom. The barb got gently hooked on the bottom but the current being strong quickly pushed diver and gun away from the spot where the shaft was hooked. On that day I believe that Gonzo's rigging was a float line with no float. In seconds Gonzo found himself holding on to the very end of the float line, unable to make headway to start his dive ahead of the shaft in order to descend on it to free it. Eventually he let go of the line and the gun was lost. This gun was very important to him as it was his first gun and he put a lot of effort into building it. By chance Rolo was dropped ahead of the gun on another drift and recuperated it.

This exact same situation happened to me on two separate occasions except I had a float at the end of the line. I ended up holding the line just at the float for like 10 minutes before the boat picked me up and dropped me ahead of the spot so I could recover the gun. The bottom line is that if there's a possibility that something can go wrong it will.

Here's the reel vs. floatline discussion http://spearfishing.world/gene…3-float-line-vs-reel.html

Quote from Adrian

The current set up you have will fail, its only a matter of time before you have to choose between the gear or your life (applicable to freedivers only).

Interesting you should say that as it's exactly how I feel about the reel. I thought you weren't aware of the possibility of this kind of situation, based on your previous post, but now I see that you are. Why then don't you extend this line of thinking to the reel? You must see that the average and especially novice spearfisher can be put in that situation because of a reel. Look at what happened to Oscar, he didn't want to lose the gun/reel/camera when the shaft got stuck on the bottom, overextended his bottom time trying to free it, and blacked out. Luckily Frank was there to save his ass. Do we have a reel vs. floatline thread? I know it's been discussed a lot just can't remember if we did it here.

Quote from hau

how is the accuracy with your new muzzle?
Just a question and suggestion, but would the accuracy be improved if there was more material up higher around the shaft?

IMO this muzzle will have no bearing on the accuracy of the gun provided it is not overpowered.

You're asking about a reel but I'm compelled to say this, use a float line and float/flag. It's a simpler safer system, especially for beginners.

You can have shooting line between the spear and the reel line, or you can connect the reel line directly to the spear, it's user preference. I prefer an open muzzle, it's faster to load and for me is easier to aim.

If you're going to use a reel with a railgun, the Speardiver composite speargun reel is a good choice. One of its main advantages being that once you set the drag it stays set after the shot. Most other composite reels go into free spool.

I'm somewhat becoming a believer in making the first dive off a boat deep. I noticed that in the pool my first dive is pretty long and very relaxing. Maybe because at that point the body is still well oxygenated/there's no oxygen debt.

I think diving, pressure and cold, activate the mammalian diving reflex which somehow makes the body conserve more oxygen. It could be a body mechanism that is not possible to control consciously, that only kicks under certain conditions. It's hard to achieve this state without depth in a relatively warm swimming pool.

<img src= " class="smiley" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x" height="23" width="23" loading="eager" data-tooltip="biggrin" aria-label="biggrin">  Well done. I don't understand though how you managed those elongated holes in the fence post? I figured at most you'd get a round indentation. Did you use a downward stabbing motion? What do you think we do with our sharks <img src= " class="smiley" srcset="https://spearfishing.world/forum/images/smilies/emojione/1f606@2x.png 2x" height="23" width="23" loading="eager" data-tooltip="biggrin" aria-label="biggrin">

Do it, do it! You'll feel great if it doesn't crack. I've done it with my spikes.

Sweeeeet!

Little meat on the bottom side but it may be enough. How about thrusting it into a tree a couple of times to see if it will not crack? How deep into the muzzle does the spike go?

If you're weighed correctly does swimming back to the surface from depth require the same effort as swimming underwater horizontally?

I'm thinking if there is a difference then it's very small. As such once you get to the glide, which is fairly quickly, you're getting a free ride in terms of air consumption. Why is it then that depth is so important to some freedivers? Isn't underwater distance swimming more challenging and at the same time free of the danger element? It's not like the depth motivated freedivers are going down there to see something, all they see is the rope.

I found this free little program for PC EasyGPS that will recognize my Garmin GPS 72 and other GPS machines, and will download waypoints, tracks etc. to the program. The data can then be uploaded to another GPS machine or saved in a GPS Exchange file .gpx which can then be used by another GPS machine. This latter part I'm not sure about how it's done but theoretically this is a format that all GPS machine can recognize. Try it and post back about how it works. You can also download it HERE.

The Technisub is a nice mask. The Speardiver Micromask is very similar in style and fit and is less expensive.

The website says it's being tuned up. I added a Hollywood beach cam which has a similar perspective.