I have a pair of Mares Raptor fins that I bought when I thought I was going to be using them for occasional snorkeling in the Caribbean on cruises. They seemed like a good fin for the money and the use that I had intended for them. However, knowing that it is more fun to be under water than on top, my wife and I decided to get OW certified, and I used the Raptors for the first ten dives this year without a problem. Those dives were a maximum of two dives/day for a max of three days. Now, after a week in Bonaire with three dives a day I find that I have some pretty nasty bruising under the nails of my big toes and the fourth toe on each foot. I suspect the problem may be the fact that I wore Deep Sea Manta boots (hard soles) at Bonaire which raised my foot in the fin pockets of the Raptor fins which have a hard plastic shell on the foot pocket. My gut feeling is that I am going to have to buy some other fins that have softer, all rubber foot pockets for use on heavy duty dive weeks where I need hard sole rather than medium sole boots, but before I spend more money on fins, I would appreciate any comments from more experienced divers that may have had this problem. If it turns out that I have to buy different fins, I am not going to be terribly upset, because I found the divers in my group at Bonaire (many were wearing Scubapro Twin Jets) were smoking ahead of me, and I was expending a lot of energy to keep up. Of course that probably had more to do with my kicking technique than the fins. But novice divers are like novice golfers in that we tend to want to find the better club to compensate for a crappy swing.
