Had a great dive at BHB today thanks to Dan Volker. I greatly appreciate that he took the time to meet with me and give me a tour today. I'm sure there are any number of things he would rather do besides drag a newby around.
Vis was good when we started out and we were able to see a lot of interesting stuff. A good bit of it was new to me. Unfortunately I chose to not take my GoPro because I didn't think the red filter would do well in such shallow water. We did see a small octopus hiding in a hole (thanks for pointing that out Dan), a nudibrank (spl?) And a whole bunch of stuff I can't identify.
For me, it was a very good day.
Thanks again Dan!
Robert
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It was my pleasure to dive with you Robert.
And thanks for giving me the chance to try the pair of Cetatek fins......As I recal, there had been a post about them claiming that they were a revolutionary new kind of fin, and the best, etc, and this had caused me to offer some severe cynicism....So I used the Cetateks on a pretty long tour--we probably swam close to a mile with all the roaming around we did.
These fins are very precise, they frog kick extremely well due to the "scooping" effect they create with the sudden frog kicking motion when you go to push for each forward thrust part of the kick, and this allows a good glide between....not as big a push or glide as my huge DiveR freedive fins, but much better than the majority of scuba fins I have tried. At least as good if not better than Scuba Pro Jetfins--old and lame technology--but which is still precise and functional for frog, reverse, helicopter and modified flutter.
The Cetateks do modified Fluter actually better than they do flutter kick--this is a kick technique you might use in an easily silted area, when there is no side to side room for a frog kick( since with a frog kick your legs push your find way out to the sides, and in a narrow corridor setting, you would be hitting the walls)..With the modified flutter your feet are pointing up more at a 90 degree angle, and flutter kicking from there....
For normal flutter kick, the Cetateks provide less efficiency when going at a medium pace--very slow, and efficiency is of course no issue....at medium, you feel the scooping effect as a muscle work action that is not helping much...but at high speed scenarios, when you want sustained high speed, the scooping somehow becomes efficient, and they do a good job of using leg power to push you fast and efficiently on a high speed cruise ( one of my complaints on the jet fins--they are bad at efficiency for a long high speed cruise with flutter kick).
The Cetateks were very precise for Reverse kick and helicopters, and you use the same skills or technique you would use with Jets----with some fins like my big DiveR freedive fins, you have to change the technique a little to make reverse kick work optimally---but this is not the case here.
One aspect worthy of note....for a diver that tends to be foot heavy--their feet tend to fall and trim does not tend to stay flat horizontal, the Cetateks seem almost to be buoyant fins, so these may help you with trim if your legs have always tended to sink....but if you NEED heavy fins, as in a dry suit wearer, these may be a bit of an issue for you.....
Overall, I rate these far above the Scuba Pro Slingshots, which are a flimsy design that is easily overkicked unless your legs are pretty weak, and which could not be expected to last much beyond one or two seasons, before structural breakage.....The Cetateks look like they would last--even though they have a little bit of the concept of the Slingshots employed---they just look like they figured out how to do this in a smarter way. So ...if you don't want to go with freedive fins, then these Cetateks are great fins, and my apologies to Cetatek for my earlier slammings
Thanks Robert for letting me try them.
