NEWS

Update April 3, 2008

Tomorrow, April 3rd, will be our first official rest day since arriving on the island. The first to arrive in this tropical paradise of Grand Cayman was Kirk and myself (this is Mandy-Rae writting this update). Well we actually came down early on March 19th with some friends and partners, David Blaine and the Kaiser family (of Precision Health Care). We spent the first week here doing some static training in the pool as well as some scooter Freediving (thanks to OPS) that was not only a blast but also helped us adapt to the pressures of depth. After a dive to 200ft David Blaine couldn't whip the grin off his face and said that "Freediving was one of the greatest pleasures that he has experienced". The smile on all of our faces told the same story.

Kirk zooming by on his scooter.

We also played around at Stingray City for an afternoon introducing Marc Kaiser's girls to Freediving with Stingrays. Man was that fun. Due to the bad press stingray's have received lately it was great to see everyone get in the water and feel comfortable enough with these creatures that we all pet them, fed them and posed for pictures with some very friendly stingrays.

Stingrays at Stingray City, Grand Cayman

Real full-on line training got started on March 31. Already on island, besides Kirk and I, are Carolina Schrappe (Brazil), Craig Gentry (USA), Charles Boddoe (Canada), Andy Norlander (USA), and Rob King (USA). We just got back in from our 3rd day of training and things are going pretty well so far. It is hard for it not to go well. Just listen to the water conditions right now...the visibility is about 45m (but Kirk said that when he was down at 30m he could see all the way down to the bottom plate at 75m), the water temperature is 80 degrees and there is just a bit of surface chop. It is amazing here! Sorry if you are reading this somewhere cold. Carolina had to sit out today's dive due to some equalizing issues but we are sure she will be back in full force on the next training day. Craig is the other person hurting right now. He kept his Waterway Glide fin on too long the first day and rubbed all the skin off his toes. But being the tough guy he is, he hasn't let it slow him down.

Our favorite underwater photographer Courtney Platt came out to do a photo shoot with the seven of us before he left on holidays. He is the guy that makes everyone look great underwater.

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