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Cayman 2004 - Freediving World Record Event

Day 4 - HELP we need a boat :>

Thursday the 4th I arrange for a friend's boat to take us out. We had originally scheduled shore diving till Mandy and Doc arrive on the 6th, but due to weather and the current that kicked our butts off Sunset yesterday, we decide to make an afternoon trip with a good friend, Nick Buckley of Red Baron Divers. Nick has been involved in just about every freediving event we've done on Cayman and also spent a year shooting for Pipin way back when. I've also had the privilege of torturing (teaching) Nick through his nitrox-trimix programs. If you want to hear some great stories or need to know anything about the waters off Cayman, Nick is the man!!!

Nick picks us up at Public Beach and a short two minute ride later we are drifting in over 2000m / 6600' of water. The water is CLEAR AND BLUE offering us about 50m / 165' of visibility. We get in and Martin starts his warm-ups with the usual five minute facial immersion, followed by a 15m / 3:00, 25m / 3:00 and a negative pressure touch'n'go dive to 17m. Each of these is interspersed with a five minute ventilation, except for the target dive breathe-up with a seven minute countdown. Due to the long swim yesterday, today is going to be a free immersion rather than constant dive as originally scheduled. Martin starts his dive and all looks good, but he is on his nose right away with his hand doing frenzel. This isn't a good sign considering both Mandy and Martin can equalize hands free. I meet him at 25m on the way up and he looks fine, but I can tell he's disappointed. By 15m I signal him to remove his lanyard for practice. We hit the surface and he is quickly tapping his right ear. It locked up around 71m / 232' where he turned, instead of the 80m / 264' target depth. No worries, it's only the start of three weeks of training and all our ears are a little tight.

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