Club "Baki" at the 2012 Russian Championship on the Black Sea

Hi to all spearfishers and everyone who sympathizes with our affliction! While I'm still in Gelendzhik, waiting for the next competition, I'd like to share my impressions of the 2012 Russian Championship that just took place. I should mention that I've taken part in Russian competitions before, but never at this level. Suffice it to say that the strongest athletes in Russia gathered here in Divnomorsk: V.Dokuchaev (8-time Russian champion), A.Utkin, A.Tutukhano, A.Burtsev, P.Antonov and many others. I counted 11 Masters of Sport and 10 Candidate Masters of Sport. It was a pleasure, and very instructive, to talk with these people. For me personally, the goal of the trip was to raise my level of preparation, and I wanted to gain experience hunting deeper fish.Before starting the report I'd like to thank our club and all the guys who were so supportive of this trip. So I had no choice but to win!!! For example, Yusif, Ramin and Semyon, without a moment's hesitation, offered and handed over their gear. Ramin, what a legend, lent me his brand-new speargun, without which I wouldn't have landed a single fish. Without Semyon's float I couldn't have saved the GPS points. Zakir, Yusif and Jeyhun took an active part in the negotiations with the organizers about my participation in the competition. Huge thanks to all of you!!!! But let's get down to business...Every trip to the sea, especially one this far away, is a whole adventure and can't be squeezed into a couple of sheets of paper. You can dive familiar rocks for a whole year and not a single minute will stick in your memory, or you can remember every dive of a 5-hour hunt in unknown waters. THE FIRST DAY OF THE COMPETITION was cancelled because of strong wind and rain. Looking for more or less clear water, the judges went to Dzhankhot, but there the swell was so heavy that getting into the water was out of the question. All that was left was to wait for the change in weather the forecasters had promised. THE SECOND DAY OF THE COMPETITION. The wind really did die down, but the sea couldn't clear up in just 4-5 hours. In the morning, the medical and technical inspections. The start was set for 11.15 from the center of the competition area. Thanks to the local spearfisher who took me in his boat. The other participants scattered to their own boats and rented motorboats. Heading out to the center of the area was accompanied by enthusiastic support and parting words from the judges and the support team. Many understood that visibility was unlikely to be good and the hunting would be at depths of 10 meters and more. We gathered in the center of the area by the judges' boat, which carried the chief judge N.Stashevsky (who, by the way, served in Baku in the '70s-'80s as a serviceman on SKA), M.Kaslanov, coach of the Saint Petersburg team, and A.Arzhanova, president of the RPF. Start. All the boats with their athletes bustled off across the area. I should note that the start was not far from the spots I had scouted during training with qualifying-size corbs. Turning down the local hunters' offer to "zip over to the sure spots", I asked to be dropped at "my own points", which later turned out to be the right decision. Dropping into the water, at 10 meters I found underwater visibility of 1-1.5 meters at most. Following the navigator attached to the buoy, I reached the point with a margin of 5 meters. As it turned out in practice, with that kind of swell and visibility it's impossible to hover over a saved point. I had to work by feel. Diving to 12-14 meters, I moved along the bottom looking for grottos. Half an hour later, in one of the rock piles, in a dark nook, the torch mounted on my gun lit up the tail of a decent corb. Squeezing as far as I could into the grotto, I fired. At first I didn't understand whether I'd hit it or not. I pulled on the line, but the spear didn't budge. Feeling a strong urge to breathe, I shot to the surface. Having first dropped my quick-release weight, I dove before fully recovering to attach the buoy line to the gun. Luckily, I hadn't drifted that far from the grotto. After diving 5-6 times, I realized the spear was stuck so badly that there was no way to get it out without a special tool, a retriever. The question "cut or not cut the line" became critical. The fact that this was Ramin's gun played the main role in favor of "don't cut". And while saving the spear, I was no longer thinking about the competition or the fish on it. While there were no judges' boats nearby, I swam around the nearest athletes looking for a retriever. I'll skip all my ordeals, doubts and thoughts... and just say that I dove this spot non-stop for 2.5 hours at a depth of 13.4 meters. In the end fate smiled on me and I, seeing a greenish buoy that appeared out of nowhere. Swimming closer, not hoping for anything, I asked for help in the form of a retriever. And thanks to Yura, who, despite the competition, where everyone is a rival to each other, gave me a homemade telescopic retriever with two tail ends for pneumatic guns and band guns. Two dives later the spear with the fish was in my hands. It turned out to be that very qualifying corb that brought me second place at the Russian Championship. There's a lot I could describe and tell for a long time, so all the impressions when we meet....Good luck everyone!!! See you!!!