Puerta Vallarta with Diving For A Cause

The introduction

I was asked to go on this trip several months ago, and who could turn down the opportunity to hunt yellowfin tuna with Terry Maas?  We checked the moon cycles and he chose the perfect time to go down, end of October/early November right around the full moon.  We were told that Terry would be filming this trip for a pilot of a possible TV series on Diving For A Cause.  Punta de Mita is about 20 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta and Sebastian, the owner of Punta de Mita Expeditions, is a personal friend of Terry's and together they've pretty much mastered the tuna hunting in that area.  There are other operations in the area that are cheaper but compared to Sebastians outfit they're just old Mexicans with a boat.  We organized the trip in two groups this time so the first group went down for a week and then the following week the second group went down.  I was in the second group.  There were 9 people in the second group and going in I knew Terry, Colleen, and one other diver, (Ian E.)  Another diver, (Iaon P.), is the president of the Watermen's Alliance so I'd been on conference calls with him and met him briefly a couple times but had never spent any time with him.  The other four were complete strangers but it's always a good crowd when you're hanging out whith divers and expecially divers affiliated with Diving For A Cause.   They turned out to be Malibu John from spearboard, David, and two friends of Iaon's, Garick and Peter.

I hit the Freediveshop the Thursday before I left and picked up some bungees.  They didn't have the floatline I wanted so I ordered one and Greg loaned me his for the trip.  (Thanks Greg)  Saturday I picked up a Rob Allen hard float from Matt Mattison and he sent a floatline with it too so I definately had the floatline situation covered.   I drove down to Ventura on Monday and stopped at my buddy Matt Davidson's of Blue Tuna Spearfishing to pick up some other stuff and to borrow a gun.  He loaned me an Andre 165 Platinum, (Thank you Matt) I bought a shaft and tip for it, (no problem since a good tuna would probably bend the shaft anyway.)  I didn't think I'd like the gun because of the wings and it looks bulky, but in the water it handles really nice.  Very little recoil, in fact most of the time I was shooting one handed, and it's easy to pull forward aim and fire from present position which is how I dive with a bigger gun. 

I spent Monday night at Ian's house and Tuesday morning we hit the airport.  We met up with Iaon, Garrick and David so there were five of us flying down together, or so we thought.  David is a frequent flyer so he upgraded his ticket to first class.  The joking started immediately.  "We're not good enough for you?"  Blah, blah, blah......  We decided to call him anything that started with a D that wasn't his name, kind of a "who are you again?" inference.  He took the joking well and on one of the flights he brought the others  free beers from first class to kind of smooth things over.  Nice try Derrick!  It's always a good time on these adventures.  We got to our accomodations in the early afternoon and they were amazing.  A luxury condo with three master bedrooms that each had two queen size beds, a private outdoor foyer and an exterior wall that opens from the living room to the private deck with a private pool so that the living room and the deck are open.  It backed up to a golf course and at the other end of the fairway we were on was the beach.  Freaking amazing!!!  We went down to the beach club for dinner then came home and got our gear ready for diving the next day.  I'll take this opportunity to say, never buy, borrow or use a Rob Allen inflatable float that has a bladder.  My hippo float was punctured on the way down so I had to use part of an old innertube and some suit glue to create a makeshift patch and when you're shooting the fish of your life, you don't want to have to hope the patch holds, if you know what I mean.  Three RA bladder floats went to Mexico between all the divers and by the end of the trip, all 3 had popped.  If you're going to buy an inflatable float, go with a hypalon float that doesn't have a bladder.  Rob Allen does have one, JBL and Riffe too.  Turned out Sebastian loaned me a Riffe two atmosphere float so I didn't have to rely on that patch.  (Thanks C-bass)

We hit the sack and had dreams of tuna, and a deep blue color that words can't describe.

To be continued.....

Pics! I need Pics!

 

 

Sincerely,

Jim

I'm trying Jim but it's not letting me post pics.

I'm trying Jim but it's not letting me post pics.

What issues are you hitting with posting pics?

-Allen

I've tried posting multiple pics but that didn't work.

I tried fewer pics but that didn't work.

I tried posting a single pic and that didn't work.

I'll try compressing or converting to a smaller file size next.

what is the max file size?

The error I get says there was an error loading,
either exceeds max file size or it took too long to load.

converted to pdf

I've tried posting multiple pics but that didn't work.

I tried fewer pics but that didn't work.

I tried posting a single pic and that didn't work.

I'll try compressing or converting to a smaller file size next.

what is the max file size?

The error I get says there was an error loading,
either exceeds max file size or it took too long to load.

The max file size is really big.  Are you on a slow connection?  Maybe having timeout issues.

-Allen

Yeah, these work computers suck.  Pdf worked though.  I'm not going to be a picture heavy poster.