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I’m getting ready to do my Christmas shopping but I
have to wait a couple of days until they announce the winner of the
$60,000,000 lotto. During our morning exercise, I worked on the fine
details of how I would spend the money. At least, I made some major
decisions on how to spend some of it after the IRS takes their share of
the winnings. I’m thinking I’ll end up giving around half to the IRS as a
Christmas Gift (do they have to pay tax on gifts?) which leaves me about
30 million to play with. A couple million will go to the kids. Our new
house on the water, with new furniture, top of the line appliances, dock
and miscellaneous doodads along with our new super duper dive boat will
probably take another million. Throw in a couple of cars and a few fancy
outfits to wear in all of this luxury and we’ll be set for a while. So
that leaves around 27 million to use for travel & dive gear. With that in
mind, we visited our local Scuba Shops to see if they could help us spend
some of the winnings. After all, the local dive shops support us with
service, equipment, air fills and all other scuba related needs so they
deserve to be a part of our expected windfall.
Each year we ask the local dive related businesses for ideas on
inexpensive Christmas gifts for divers but since we’re going to have all
of this money to spend, we decided to ask for some more exotic ideas to go
along with the usual assortment.
Mike Johnson at Ocean Images& Co., Inc. in Cape Coral,
www.oceanimagesinc.com, Tel: (239) 458-7155, manufactures top of the line
digital video camcorder housings that are so reasonably priced that it was
difficult for him to put a dent in our extravagant budget. Ocean Images
housings for most standard video cameras run under $1,000 but we wanted to
go the limit so we asked. Keith Loson, of Ocean Images, says to begin with
a Sony VX2100 camcorder for around $3,500. Put it in the big VX2100
housing ($1,995), add a Sony Wide Angle Port ($500), external digital
video monitor ($650) and a set of RB-60 video lights ($930) and for
roughly $7,500 we’ll look like pros.
Skip Lawrence, Coral Scuba in Cape Coral, www.coralscuba.com, Tel: (239)
574-5100, wants to make sure we can identify the sea life we will be
photographing with our new camera equipment so he is having a special sale
(25 percent off) on any books in the entire Marine Life Identification
collection. The popular book series covers the Caribbean as well as the
Pacific (with all that money we’ll be doing lots of vacations) and even
the California/Alaska area. It even includes some children’s story books
about underwater life. Skip reminds us that when we are carrying around
all of this camera equipment, we need to pay attention to our depth, time
and air consumption so on the more exotic end of our shopping spree we
should take a look at one of the new personal wireless dive computers that
looks like a wristwatch. We can even monitor 2 more divers with the
addition of extra transmitters. A package like this is generally running
around $999.95. He says to keep our eyes open for more technological
advances in scuba gear in the coming year particularly in the electronic
region, such as GPS to help us locate the dive boat or map a dive site.
Bob & Lynne Lauer at Underwater Explorers in Fort Myers, Tel: (239)
481-4733, www.underwaterexplorers.net were on top of our spending spree.
They started with a 15 percent storewide sale that is on from now until
Christmas so we can browse around their well stocked shop on McGregor
Boulevard and update some of that gear that’s been getting dusty in the
garage after the summer hurricanes. They also suggested that we might want
to add a Sealife Digital Pro camera set to our photographic repertoire but
could only spend about $485 (incl. discount) on this great underwater
camera kit. The next suggestion was more in line with our plans – a 2006
trip to Micronesia to dive Truk Lagoon & Pohnpei. We love Micronesia so we
are sure that the $5,099 per person is a good way to spend our money. The
price includes airfare and accommodations in Truk on the Truk Aggressor II
and at the exotic Village Hotel in Pohnpei. There’s plenty of time to plan
ahead so we figure we will accumulate some interest on our money to pay
for some trinkets and souvenirs from our trip.
We caught Peter Williamson in between some plumbing repairs at Scuba Quest
in Cape Coral, Tel: (239) 458-1999, www.scubaquestusa.com. We browsed
around the displays of masks, fins, snorkels and wetsuits as Peter told us
about the newest gadget. We can now enjoy our favorite music or audio
guided tours with a submersible MP3 player from Oceanic. Complete with
earphones to attach to our mask straps or under our hood, this little
device will keep us entertained (for only $320) while we cruise along on
our new Sea-Doo underwater scooter ($600-700). We can also join a Scuba
Quest trip to the Dry Tortugas early in 2005. Peter also has a great
collection of dive bags to hold all of this equipment and to use for
travel.
Brent Argabright, Deans Dive Center in Fort Myers, www.deansdivecenter.com,
Tel: (239) 489-0500 thinks we need to round out our scuba experience with
some spear fishing and lobster gear. Brent carries a full line of scuba
equipment and training classes and we know we can find everything we need
to round out our equipment inventory but it’s his specialization in spear
fishing gear that we need right now. We can start with a spear fishing
class since we hope to fill up the coolers on our new boat with lots of
fresh grouper, snapper and hogfish. Deans carries an exceptional stock in
the major brands of spear guns such as Riffe International, AB Biller,
Spear fishing Specialists and others. When we need stringers, lines,
bands, shafts and other accessories, we only have to stop in and make our
choices. We also need a couple of sets of the warm-up suits that absorb
water and warm us up between dives, I’m thinking hot pink but Brent has
those neutral gray & blue colors for the guys too. We browsed through his
selection of Citizen dive watches because we’ll need to pay attention to
the time while we are catching flights to our exotic vacation paradises.
Todd Johnson, Scuba Quest in Fort Myers, www.scubaquestusa.com, (239)
936-7106, wanted to make that our new boat is equipped with every thing we
need for those long trips. He is sure that we need a Brownies Third Lung,
sometimes known as Hookah. We can take up to 4 divers on an underwater
safari with our air compressor floating along behind us for around $2,400.
Might come in handy on a trip to the Bahamas or Dry Tortugas.
We’re happy to report that Fantasea Scuba in Port Charlotte,
www.fantaseascuba.com, (941) 627-3888 is back in full operation after the
devastation of Hurricane Charlie knocked them out for a while. Fantasea
Scuba is the largest dive shop in Charlotte County and Julie & Jim Joseph
have worked hard to provide an extremely active training program as well
as one of the busiest dive charter calendars in the area. They offer a
huge selection of dive gear from most of the major manufacturers at
excellent prices. They are both dive instructors and have an additional
staff of eleven certified instructors. During the year, the Fantasea
calendar also includes charters to some of the very popular Gulf areas
that are a must see for the southwest Florida diver. Jim thinks we can add
an AB Biller LTD spear gun to our collection along with some air fill
cards since we’re going to have so much free time to go diving. He also
thinks that a VR3 computer used by tech divers would make a really good
addition to our gear bag. The VR3 ranges from $989-$1200 and is the same
one worn by John Chatterton on the History Channel’s Deep Sea Detectives.
This computer does it all – tri-mix, programmable for several gasses,
generates custom deco tables, O2 analyzer built in and connects to a PC.
Don’t forget to add a gift certificate for an Extended Range and Tri-Mix
class to go with that computer.
Kevin Alves of Underwater Specialists in North Fort Myers, www.fladive.com,
(239) 656-3483 showed us around the well-stocked shop and found some nice
goodies for our wish list. He thought the Underwater Kinetics Fathom 4
Light Pack was a super deal and we have to agree. The package includes the
Sunlight C8, Mini Q40, SL4 and Dive Beacon. With this pack, you end up
with a light for every occasion. The LED lights are really popular and
have extremely long burn times compared to traditional lights. This
particular package sells for around $140. Kevin also suggested that a dive
excursion to Bonaire would be a nice way for us to spend some of our lotto
winnings. Let’s see, walk-off the beach, dive day and/or night, clear
water – we’re almost there.
I realize we haven’t spent all of the money but we do need to set some
aside for new products and dive excursions that come our way. In the
meantime, we’ll be making regular visits to our local dive shops and hope
everyone else will do the same. From stocking stuffers to the big ticket
items, you only have to look in the neighborhood for great deals and the
great feeling of personal service that our local shops offer. Happy
Holidays. |
