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Cayman 2004 - Freediving World Record Event

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Day 13 - Just another day at the office

Kirk donning his Oeaner PFD suit
Kirk donning his Oceaner PFD suit
Today's just another day at the office, except that our power suits aren't the typical double-breasted pin stripes, but silver and gold, with attached hood, in Yamamoto 45 neoprene. They're our super Oceaner Performance Freediving suits.

The winds are still up, just as ferocious and even a little stronger than the day before. We make one small adjustment to the counterbalance today. Instead of putting 40lbs on the performance side and 80lbs on the counterbalance side, we split the 80lbs into two (40 and 40) and attach one at the top of the float with a carabineer around the counterbalance line with a snap shackle and a safety line. This avoids us -- or rather, Danny -- from having to haul up 80lbs from depth. This is pretty tedious and Danny is about to out-grow all of his shirts with the muscles he's been building.

Martin on the boat
Martin on the boat
Martin's warm-ups go well and on time. His dive today is a free immersion target of 100m and he's very confident of everything except his left ear which is now hit and miss. We mount one of the videos on the bottom of the plate, since Derek is off doing his own work-up dives for another project. Upon reaching the surface, Martin announces that his left ear won't equalize and he doesn't want to take any chances with it down there. So he ends up turning at 93m in a total time of 3:30. Guess it's time to go see Dr. Glatz on Monday, Cayman's freediving friendly ENT.

Next, Mandy starts her warm-up and preparation. The synchronicity is getting really good between M & M. We've pretty much worked out the timing to no more than ten minutes between their target attempts, which is good for the safety divers who remain at depth. Mandy targets 69m in constant ballast and starts her dive with a little twisting off at the start to around 4-6m. By the time Mandy and Doc get to perform their targets they're dealing with some pretty good chop as we're pushed out from land quite a way by the time Martin is done his dive.

All goes as planned. I follow her to the surface and after her recovery breathing she's excited about not crashing into the plate anymore :>) She hears the computer alarms in time to see the 10m mark before the plate. She looks up, grabs the 1.5m mark, touches plate and turns. Reviewing the bottom video is great because the water is so clear. We can actually see her descending from the point where Tony is taping her. From this 30m vantage point we can see her kicking, easily kicking, gliding, looking up, touching and turning. She makes her 69m in 2:15 (1:13 down and 1:02 up), but we're not sure of the timing as the Suunto D3 isn't turning on quickly enough, even though I make sure to put it into freedive mode just before she descends. I really can't wait to try out the new Mares Nemo which will be out of the factory in the next couple of weeks.

Doc touches the plate
Doc touches the plate		 Relaxing after the dives
Relaxing after the dives

Next is Doc, and today Mandy is working with him on his technique to help polish off some of the rough edges. By performing multiple dives to 25m / 82' and working on the synchronization of pulls to equalizations (using a mask for free immersion), and by streamlining his body position during descent (keeping the legs together), Doc works the equalizing process and most importantly has fun with it.

Soon we finish training and grab some lunch at the Tree House. Then it's off to get ready for an evening at Danny's to help celebrate his birthday and Danny and Marnie's recent engagement. We relax with good friends, good food and drink. Danny and Kevin break out their guitars and a pretty good day is brought to a perfect conclusion.

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