NEWS

Cayman 2004 - Freediving World Record Event

Day 17 - Bottom ... What bottom?

From Mandy-Rae

Martin's taking the day off today to make sure that he is at his best for tomorrow's training. I guess that we can let him take a personal day after doing 100m! He's earned it. As for the rest of the gang, we load into the van and head off to meet Danny from Off the Wall Divers. In case I haven't mentioned it, Danny is The Man to dive with in Cayman. He has been great about rearranging his schedule to help get us out training whenever we need to and he's always there smiling, helping out and playing great tunes.

The water is fantastic today. It's the second day in a row that we have calm waters with very little chop. Since Martin is off I am the first to go. I do my usual five minute facial immersion, two pull downs with holds between 10-15m and one negative pressure dive. Things are feeling good and the ear that I squeezed the other day is working fairly well. That means that the target dive is on. Kirk starts my seven minute count and I just lay back relaxed and start breathing up. Before I know it, zero count has come and I'm taking my last breath.

A view of the counterbalance system

Mandy's mermaid impression

Mandy smiling after the dive

The start of the decent is a bit off as a cut on my right foot is killing me and in turn I am trying to change my kick to make it feel better. My ears feel great all the way down despite being a bit noisy (but no pain). My free fall is a bit off as well as I find myself twisting around the line as I sink. Then before I know it, I am at the bottom grabbing my tag and head back towards the surface. Kirk meets me at 25m as usual and I stick my tongue out at him to show him that all's going well. I get to the surface, finish my recovery breaths, remove my nose clip and goggles and give everyone a big smile and OK sign. It was a great 74m dive in two minutes and 26 seconds (1:23 down and 1:03 up).

Right after the dive we hang around and do some photos with Courtney Platt. His photos from the other day turned out fabulous and we can't wait to see more of his photo magic. We will have some of his pictures up on the Performance Freediving web site shortly so keep your eyes open for them.

Next up is Doc. He is already in the water and doing his first breath hold. To all of us it looks like he is in the groove. Unfortunately the tooth fairy has other plans for him. On his second warm-up dive he starts to feel a horrible pain in one of his back teeth, it's a tooth squeeze. So we rush him straight from the boat to the dentist for some emergency dental work. He should be in the water tomorrow setting some new PB's.

Kirk has been working hard every day setting up the day's events, planning and making arrangements for the record days, and being super safety freediver man. Some days I think that he may be super human! Any other man would be dead of exhaustion by now. To top things off he got stung really badly all over his belly and legs when the line he was pulling up brushed across him.

We are staying in tonight so that we can all relax and get set up for tomorrow's dives. I hope that everyone is enjoying the video clips on the website. Tony has been spending many late nights and early mornings putting these together for us. Stay tuned for more amazing feats from the Performance Freediving Team!

Cheers,
Mandy-Rae

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