Cayman 2005 - Freediving World Record Event
Day 16 - March 29 — Employing three safety systems
It's early to West Bay dock and we're out. We find
a mooring ball that lays us in deep water. Today's order
is Mandy, Martin, then Doc, Doc, Doc. Although the visibility
and water conditions are great, a slight current moves
us onto the deep reef and causes a little hang up on
the wall for us.
Mandy starts off with a free immersion attempt and
all goes well. Bill Coltart's at depth videotaping,
while Dave's at 50m / 164ft as the safety diver with
the ascent bag. We are employing three safety systems.
First off we're using a 'diver assisted freediver retrieval
system' (FRSDA) which means that the divers can use
the 114kg / 250lb 'pillow-bags' with both a climbing
ascender and a carabineer. The 'diver assisted' system
is deployed when the troubled diver is at, or above,
the safety scuba diver. The safetys either attach the
lift bag onto the diver's lanyard or onto the line where
it'll catch the lanyard.
The second safety system is deployed when the troubled
freediver is deeper than the safety divers. The climbing
clamp is snapped onto the line and the same 'pillow-bags'
are inflated. During deployment these 114kg / 250lb
'pillow-bags' lift the freediver, the entire line, ballast
and sled (if used). With this system in place, we don't
need to have safety divers all the way to depth. However,
they will be hanging within 20m / 66ft of the bottom
depth where they can clearly observe how the athlete
is progressing, ready to assist if necessary.
The third and last safety system is the counter balance.
We're currently using it as a balanced counter-balance
system. This means that the weight at depth on the athlete's
side of the line is equal to that of the counter line
(which is running down on the other side of the boat).
Currently we're using 36kg / 80lb on the counter line.
Setting it up this way makes it easy for one person
to adjust line depths from the boat. The key to this
being a 'fast ascent' system is the additional 36kg
/ 80lb of ballast that can easily be deployed from the
boat with a tag line. When dropped, the weight falls
along the counter line, eventually hitting bottom ballast
and adding the additional weight. As this is potentially
dangerous for anyone down there, the safety divers have
their own descent and safety lines to keep them away
from the counter line.
Back to Mandy's free immersion dive ...
She hits bottom and ascends to Spencer's loud cheers
which're somewhat muffled through his rebreather. I
meet her at 30m / 99ft. At the surface it's clear that
Mandy's made the depth prerequisite of 72m / 236ft in
free immersion. So now she'll sit out a few rotations.
It's Martin's turn.
Martin's going for a no-fins attempt of 71m / 233ft.
He's starting to excel at no-fins as he gets even deeper.
It seems to be getting easier for him as he gets the
feel of the discipline. Today there may be another unofficial
world record in no-fins. If he's successful, he'll be
only nine meters away from Umberto Pelizarri's legendary
80m / 264ft constant ballast with fins attempt -- now
immortalized in the IMAX film 'Ocean Men'.
Martin heads down to depth and 1:30 later I go to meet
him as safety. The smirk on his face makes me wonder
what's up. I'm sure that if I'd looked closely enough
at the time, I'd have noticed the sand and coral streaming
off his wetsuit hood. On surfacing Martin starts laughing
and tells us the whole story. He descended and hit bottom
with his head, all the while our safety diver Bill Coltart
videoed him doing it. It turns out that as Martin was
making the attempt the winds had slowly changed direction
and we'd drifted onto a deep pinnacle which just touched
the bottom weight.
Doc steps up to the plate for his first dive of the
day to 40m / 132ft. He's working on consistency now.
He successfully makes his 40m / 132ft variable ballast
dive and moves on to his next attempt to 50m / 164ft.
Unfortunately he lets his equalizing slide, and wisely
decides to bail out at 47m / 154ft to avoid causing
any barotrauma to his ears.
In between these two dives, Mandy makes an attempt
in no-fins to 41m / 135ft. It's one of the easier dives
she's done to date. Certainly, five to seven more meters
will be on the agenda for tomorrow.
[ TOP ]
|
