My brother Jimbo and I took my 15 year son out for what was supposed to be a middlegrounds trip last week. The weather shortened our 3 day trip down to an overnighter around Steinhatchee, which was still excellent.

Being from Palm Beach, Florida, we’re all used to drift diving in 1-3 knot currents, so none of us had ever freeshafted before. A quick trip to Mike at Florida Freedivers took care of that problem. Mike was good enough to set up two SeaHornet Commercial rigs for us to rent for a week. MAN was I glad we had those guns! A special thanks to you Mike for starting the rental gun program.

Our first drop was nothing sort of spectacular. In 55’ we dropped in on a HERD of 50+ gags. I have never seen so many grouper in one place in my life. The freeshafting guns were blazing, and I was really impressed at how easy it was to shoot, stringer, reload and shoot again. My son and I came up with full stringers from that dive.

Over the next day, we dropped several times per day, Capt’n Jimmy from the Jolly Rogers made sure we dropped on action every time.

With 60 degree water, I found out what cold really is. I’m so used to diving in high 70’s+ over here that I only owned a 1 mil suit. Bought a 5 mil for the trip and wish I had more. My bro ended up wearing 9/6 just to finally keep warm, and I wish i had that many layers myself.

Hope to make it out to the middlegrounds soon. But in the meantime, the Hatch was a great way to pop our Gulfdivin cherry. If anyone wants to split a charter w/me and Petra, let us know.