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POSTAGE QUOTES GOOD IN U.S.A. ONLY |
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Ray Odor - Diving Senior Citizen
Many of our customers have asked when and how I started diving. Wow, I could write a book answering those questions. Here goes. I was born on Bradenton Beach, Fl., in 1927. As such, I learned to swim by the time I was 5 years old. Guess you could say water was second nature to me and my younger brother, Bill. As years passed, we moved to Tampa. When I was 15, I went to work at the ship yard in the machine shop. That turned into a lifelong occupation. This was during W.W. 2, and, of course, when I turned 18, I was drafted into the Army. The Basic Training went very fast and I was allowed a furlough before being sent to the Philippines. The second day after I arrived home, Brother Bill and some of my buddies wanted me to go to Wekewachie Springs and swim in the crystal clear water. It was great. Brother Bill found an old Voit mask on the beach, put it on and couldn’t believe his eyes. He let me try it. I swam out over the main spring hole and swam back as quickly as I could. I just knew I was going to fall in that hole. I gave him back the mask. In 10 minutes, he said “you’ve got to see this.” He said,” see that pretty girl up on the 15Ft. dive platform? When she starts to dive, stick your head under water.” WHAT A SIGHT! Her top halter came down to her waist and she frantically tried to tuck both puppies back in before getting to the surface. I’ll admit, that was in 1946 and I’ve been up to my neck in being under water ever since. When I returned from the Army in 1947, we formed the Tampa Trident Club. We read everything we could find on diving and spear fishing, which consisted of two books, Hans Hass and some guy named Jock Cousteau. That was it. We had to make a device to stay down longer and shoot fish with our home made spring guns. We acquired two 38 Cu. Ft. air force tanks from the surplus store, soldered a tire valve into the openings and filled them to a whopping 75psi at the corner gas station. We would get in the bay with our gear on, take the valve stem out, quickly attach a 14” long piece of surgical tubing with a large wooden bead in the mouth end and bite down on the tube. We would get about three minutes under water. What an accomplishment. Problem was, while holding the tank you couldn’t hold your gun. We put our wives to work sewing a makeshift harness. that worked great, but three minutes under water was not much longer than we could hold our breath. Brother Bill, (the innovator) solved the problem. At that time we both worked at the shipyard, so we un-soldered the tire valves, made an adaptor that would connect our small tanks to the larger oxygen tanks in the shop, hooked them up, equalized them and would have about 900#’s in each of our small tanks. We attached oxygen regulators to our tanks and used our original surgical rubber hose with the wooden bead in it to breathe through. This worked great, all we had to do was bite down on the tube to shut the air off, then loosen our bite a little and as much air as we needed would flow from the regulators to fill our lungs. I don’t know how many fish we speared using those tanks in our home made harnesses’. Wake up time One day, after diving for years in shallow Tampa Bay, we decided to go check out a 50 Ft. hole in the Alafia River, not knowing we were limited in depth while using oxygen under pressure. We went down in the hole. Pretty quick Bill went back to the surface, a few minutes later, I followed. He was standing when I first came up, then I watched him fall over. I stood over him for 30 seconds, then, fell down beside him. In a short while we were both able to stand and take off our tanks. Thank goodness we didn’t make a 60ft. dive. Our good friend, diver and U/Water photographer, Burton McNeely, explained to us later that diving with pure oxygen could be fatal if you go below 45ft. So much for the learning process. Needless to say, we went searching for some way to fill our tanks with the right stuff. A medical supply company agreed to fill our tanks with medical purpose air. This was our only source till Harold McEvoy set up a compressor in his garage in 1948. We used this system until Rusty Jones and I opened The Tampa Skindiver Shop in 1958. Certification: Unheard of back in the early days. We managed to get hold of a copy of the GLAD (Greater Los Angeles Divers) training program and the Tampa Tridents started a training program at the Davis Island Pool. We taught hundreds of kids how to Scuba dive and gave them a certificate on completion. Years later, I obtained a PADI Certification. You might ask how many dives I have made. Ever tried to count the stars in the sky? 62 0f my 80 years have been spent in diving of some sort or the other. 55 of those years have been split between commercial, recreational, recovery, spear fishing and tournament diving. I never kept a log, the only dive important to me was the next one. My first spear gun consisted of a three ft. long piece of ½” pipe, a door spring and a short piece of ¼” brake rod, pointed and a small barb welded to it. It worked great for shooting 8 to 10” sheepshead under Gandy Bridge. Next there was the Arbalete Gun. This was imported from France and to us was a killer gun. It put a lot of snook and redfish on the table. With our new weapons, we moved further out in Tampa Bay. Here we were amazed at the number of large Jewfish that were around the channel markers. This sent up a flag for bigger weapons. The “RAY Gun” was born! A long gun made from ash wood and, powered by the same type surgical rubber we breathed through, was fired by a cam action trigger that lifted a stainless steel shaft off of a 3/16” pin. A detachable head (made during lunch break at the shipyard) was fitted to the spear tip. This arrangement, along with a lot of “daring do” and the “KID” Jimmy Baxendale, provided our Tampa Tridents with a lot of “Goliath”fish fry’s. My biggest fish taken with this gun was a four hundred and three pound Jewfish. (Can’t get away from their real name.) My present gun is fashioned along the very successful lines of the Biller “Sea Hornet” wooden gun, with one exception. I make a S.S. trigger mechanism for mine. Time consuming and costly, but good. My biggest fish taken with this gun, along with good friend and diver Phil Gruposa, was a 74 pound Cuberra Snapper and.that 403# Goliath Grouper. I’ve competed in tournaments ever since good friends Art Balweg, Jim Zumwalt and I decided to form the West Coast Council of Dive Clubs, known as the W.C.C. All were required to be members of The Florida Skindivers Assoc. See www.fsda-wcc.com We felt all the clubs on our coast needed to be united for fighting unfair legislation and for creating club activities. Thus was born the W.C.C. Tournaments. These tournaments still play an important part in the unity of clubs in our area, not to mention all the great people you meet along the way. Along these same lines, Art, Jim and I attended many state meetings involved in creating the Florida Skin Divers Assoc. All have served as officers of F.S.D.A. since its inception. As for tournaments I compete in presently, my last one this year was the St. Pete Open in which I won a Sherwood regulator for third place in the (you might have guessed) Sheepshead Division. The next tournament I compete in will be the Southern Open Derby. (Watch out Sheepshead). Tournament talk would not be complete without mentioning that once, in the far distant past, (1971) our team of Jack Olson, Don Waters and Ray Odor won the State free diving Spear Fishing championship. This qualified us to get our butts kicked in the Nationals. My favorite kind of spearfishing is with my “Ray Gun” and a free shaft. Nothing can be more fun than shooting at a ten pound Grouper from 25 feet away, hitting him and watching him spin as you race to grab your free shaft and your prize. There is no better place to accomplish this than the west coast of Florida. Belize, Mexico, Virgin Islands and the Bahamas are great places to visit, but there’s no place like home. Most of our diving is done around the ledges and rock piles along the West Coast. Black and Gag Grouper are the main game, with a few delicious Hog Fish thrown in for my sweet wife, Shirley. I’ve seen many changes in both spear fishing and Dive gear. Let’s take Spear Guns first. The advent of the free shaft, to me, is the most revolutionary of all. Of course you don’t use one on pelagic fish normally, but for Grouper, Snapper and bottom types, it’s the most efficient. As for diving gear, any regulator would be an improvement over a piece of surgical tubing with a bead in the end. The U.S. Divers double hose unit was by far the most important boost to Scuba Diving ever. It made our underwater world accessible to thousands who would never have had the vehicle to dive. The single hoses came along as improvements and are still in the process of evolving. Then there came the Buoyancy Compensator to replace the hard pack. Many divers think this is just a safety accessory. In reality, when the industry went to aluminum tanks, divers had to wear more weights to stay down when the tank pressure lowered, making it necessary to carry a balloon (B C) on your back to keep from plowing into the bottom when your tank was full and floating to the surface when it was half empty. All the bells and whistles were added later. I still use steel tanks and a hard pack. I’ve had to make a few adjustments as I reached 80. I’ll only go out twice a week when the weather is good and I try to let the other guys make most of the dives. I don’t get up on the dive platform as well since my right knee replacement, but I manage. I make my way into the boat with no help, and don and take off my own tank. Maybe that’s what keeps me in shape. One day, when I turned 70 and while patching a hole in a phosphate barge, a dock worker asked me how much longer I was going to do this kind of work, as I swung my tank over my head. I told him “when I can’t swing this tank over my head”. The next year I bought some smaller tanks. So there! I've been making spears, spear guns, shafts and spearing accessories over 60 years. Let me share some good products with you. www.spearfishing.cc The only members of my family who dive are my Grandsons, Bill and Ryan. I started Bill at 4 years old with a pony tank and regulator. He stayed down 15 minutes before coming up. He’s been going ever since. He is 39 now and, as a Chief Warrant Officer 3, is director of operations on an Army 314 foot aluminum catamaran that has a speed of over 52 knots. I’m jealous; he’s been around the world and dove places I never heard of. My 16 year old grandson Ryan was certified when he was 13. He’s a good spear fisherman, but not too available. If I may give some advise to the new diver, learn your limits, be confident and comfortable while under water. If you learn to do all the techniques your instructor teaches, you’ll find more shells, get more fish, and safely bring them home. Good Diving, it’s a wonderful sport Ray Odor www.Spearfishing.cc fishship@tampabay.rr.com
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