Saturday morning met me with nervous stomachs and thoughts of bad things. Being the superstitious man I am about changing routine I was a bit pissed at breakfast when I noticed that they didn't have any green peppers for my omelette, but I could live with that. Then as I went to grab a banana, they didn't have any there either! Now i'm not saying i'm a sport diva or anything but I could feel the hissy fit "i'm not doing a national record without banana" rage coming on. Luckily one of the guys ran off and got me 2 bananas from the kitchen and the crisis was averted.
After we went through some ground rules and came up with a game plan for the day we stretched, got changed and made our way out to the platform. We were kind of locked into a time slot in order for the scuba team to know when we were going (for both safety and filming), but I was trying to wrangle every extra minute I could, just to make sure I had digested enough and to let the nerves settle down a bit. Eventually we headed out, with Mark to attempt a 71m Free Immersion dive, followed by my 50m Free Immersion, then Mark's Variable Weight to eith 80m or 85m (can't recall the exact number), then my Variable to 72m.
I did my warm ups on the separate line, each warm up was a little shorter than the previous day, probably due to me eating a little more banana at breakfast (a sweet victory). Then I moved over and clung onto the the outer metal frame of the pyramid and waited for Mark to do his dive. I shut my eyes and tried to forget about Mark's dive, but eventually I could hear voices saying he'd been down too long, and when I opened my eyes I eventially saw him making his way back up, very slowly. At one point about 5m down he drifted away from the line and couldn't reach it, he leaned forward and managed to grab it again for that last pull to the surface. After this my view was obstructed by the pyramid but I knew Mark was having either a loss of motor control or a blackout, either way the dive was not successful - I looked under the rig and I could see one of the ladies' legs wrapped around Mark's in support. I tried to put that thought out of my head as I headed over for my dive.
After a couple of minutes of slow breathing I gave Linda the signal that I would go in 2 minutes. There was quite a bit of chop on the surface and I was getting the occasional facefull of water during my breathup. Finally I did my last 5 purge breaths, packed and started down the line. I tried to take it slowly with long arm strokes, at 25m my first alarm went off and I started to mouthfill, shut my eyes and started my glide. After a
few seconds I didn't think I was gliding too well so had another small pull on the line at about 35m. After this I concentrated on my mouthfill. I haven't quite figured out the mouthfill yet, I tend to lose it and fill it up again by humming, equalise and lose my mouthfill again etc. After a while I run out of hum and that's when it starts getting difficult. I was starting to get a bit concerned when I heard my second alarm (which is in my hood next to my ear where I can hear it well) go off at 45m. I opened my eyes and kept gliding to the bottom plate, grabbed my tag and started back up the line. The way back up went fairly well, I think I went a bit quicker than normal and I was met somewhere around 20m by Sofus the Danish safety man. The last 15m were a leisurely cruise back to the surface where I took a couple of big breaths and did my surface protocol to Judge Lotta who was in the water. After 30 seconds I got the ok and made big girly cry, started splashing around all was merry. One in the bag, 2 more to go.
Forty five minutes later I was back in the water on the sled, readying myself for Variable Weight. The rope was set to 72m which I thought was obtainable given that i'd only been past it once. Same story again, training had proven that equalising was my big issue on the sled. I've never felt really hypoxic on the swim back up, in fact it's felt absolutely brilliant not wearing a any weight and letting the wetsuit bouyancy start lifting you from about 30m.
Anyway, did my breath up, packed and released the brake on the sled and took off. I had an extra complication to this dive - I had to leave the sled down the bottom. In training we would dive and, at the bottom, inflate the balloon and send the sled back up, then swim up ourselves. We had to do this otherwise we'd be pulling up 60kg of sled 3 times a day. You wouldn't think this would be an issue but when you're narked like crazy and are on autopilot you'd be surprised how the mind wanders and how much you forget. I got past 30m and with the scuba crew well behind me started the real descent, concentrating on equalising my ears as well as my mask. At 55m I started mouthfilling (hugely easier with the head up) and stared at the wonder that is the Arch, the big hole in the side of... err, the hole, that starts at around 55m. Getting down where it's a bit darker past 60m always feels surreal because, well i've hardly done it before. As the air started running out to equalise with I started running through my head what I had to do: get off sled, leave it there, start swimming up....get off sled, leave it there, start swimming up.... pretty eas
y really. As the ears started to tighten up a bit the sled slammed into the bottom plate. I wiggled and wiggled my knees until my monofin was free of the handlebars then started the long swim up, not that I was particularly worried as I was pretty narked. Mostly staring at the Arch on the way back, eventually it left me and the scuba guys and the counterweight rope came into view so I knew I was close. Once again Sofus met me at around 20m and I stopped kicking and glided back to the surface to the end of what was a very pleasant dive. Thirty seconds later another girly cry and another Aussie record under the belt. I had 10 minutes on Oxygen after this which was very hard, because after a successful dive all you want to do is yabber a bit to whoever is closest, which is hard to do when you've got a regulator in your mouth and underwater.
Afterwards we headed back in to the restaurant for some post mortem analysis and started thinking about the next day. Mark was understandably upset at not making a dive he had done previously, after some hard thinking he came to the conclusion that he was very dehydrated that morning and hadn't been able to rehydrate much. This changed things a bit as having a tangible reason for something bad happening means you can deal with it and move on. We got Mark onto the rehydration formulas and he spent the rest of the day sucking down the gallons.
At the hotel that afternoon we were seriously knackered so it was a pretty lazy one. The ongoing fatigue we were both feeling had to be factored into to our decision of what depths to go for the next day - should I try to extend the Free Immersion record? The risk to this was that I would muck it up and not be able to do the No-Limits attempt later on. I couldn't do No-Limits first as logistically it was too hard lugging the rope up and down with so much weight on it. Decisions decisions....
After a couple of minutes of slow breathing I gave Linda the signal that I would go in 2 minutes. There was quite a bit of chop on the surface and I was getting the occasional facefull of water during my breathup. Finally I did my last 5 purge breaths, packed and started down the line. I tried to take it slowly with long arm strokes, at 25m my first alarm went off and I started to mouthfill, shut my eyes and started my glide. After a
few seconds I didn't think I was gliding too well so had another small pull on the line at about 35m. After this I concentrated on my mouthfill. I haven't quite figured out the mouthfill yet, I tend to lose it and fill it up again by humming, equalise and lose my mouthfill again etc. After a while I run out of hum and that's when it starts getting difficult. I was starting to get a bit concerned when I heard my second alarm (which is in my hood next to my ear where I can hear it well) go off at 45m. I opened my eyes and kept gliding to the bottom plate, grabbed my tag and started back up the line. The way back up went fairly well, I think I went a bit quicker than normal and I was met somewhere around 20m by Sofus the Danish safety man. The last 15m were a leisurely cruise back to the surface where I took a couple of big breaths and did my surface protocol to Judge Lotta who was in the water. After 30 seconds I got the ok and made big girly cry, started splashing around all was merry. One in the bag, 2 more to go.Forty five minutes later I was back in the water on the sled, readying myself for Variable Weight. The rope was set to 72m which I thought was obtainable given that i'd only been past it once. Same story again, training had proven that equalising was my big issue on the sled. I've never felt really hypoxic on the swim back up, in fact it's felt absolutely brilliant not wearing a any weight and letting the wetsuit bouyancy start lifting you from about 30m.
Anyway, did my breath up, packed and released the brake on the sled and took off. I had an extra complication to this dive - I had to leave the sled down the bottom. In training we would dive and, at the bottom, inflate the balloon and send the sled back up, then swim up ourselves. We had to do this otherwise we'd be pulling up 60kg of sled 3 times a day. You wouldn't think this would be an issue but when you're narked like crazy and are on autopilot you'd be surprised how the mind wanders and how much you forget. I got past 30m and with the scuba crew well behind me started the real descent, concentrating on equalising my ears as well as my mask. At 55m I started mouthfilling (hugely easier with the head up) and stared at the wonder that is the Arch, the big hole in the side of... err, the hole, that starts at around 55m. Getting down where it's a bit darker past 60m always feels surreal because, well i've hardly done it before. As the air started running out to equalise with I started running through my head what I had to do: get off sled, leave it there, start swimming up....get off sled, leave it there, start swimming up.... pretty eas
y really. As the ears started to tighten up a bit the sled slammed into the bottom plate. I wiggled and wiggled my knees until my monofin was free of the handlebars then started the long swim up, not that I was particularly worried as I was pretty narked. Mostly staring at the Arch on the way back, eventually it left me and the scuba guys and the counterweight rope came into view so I knew I was close. Once again Sofus met me at around 20m and I stopped kicking and glided back to the surface to the end of what was a very pleasant dive. Thirty seconds later another girly cry and another Aussie record under the belt. I had 10 minutes on Oxygen after this which was very hard, because after a successful dive all you want to do is yabber a bit to whoever is closest, which is hard to do when you've got a regulator in your mouth and underwater.Afterwards we headed back in to the restaurant for some post mortem analysis and started thinking about the next day. Mark was understandably upset at not making a dive he had done previously, after some hard thinking he came to the conclusion that he was very dehydrated that morning and hadn't been able to rehydrate much. This changed things a bit as having a tangible reason for something bad happening means you can deal with it and move on. We got Mark onto the rehydration formulas and he spent the rest of the day sucking down the gallons.
At the hotel that afternoon we were seriously knackered so it was a pretty lazy one. The ongoing fatigue we were both feeling had to be factored into to our decision of what depths to go for the next day - should I try to extend the Free Immersion record? The risk to this was that I would muck it up and not be able to do the No-Limits attempt later on. I couldn't do No-Limits first as logistically it was too hard lugging the rope up and down with so much weight on it. Decisions decisions....
4 comments:
Exiting to read ! Congrats.
You do realise that it's been a month and you haven't even told me what you did yet. I'm thinking the second day wasn't great because you're not excited enough to find time to write it up!
I'm excited about it, I just haven't had the time! Well i've wrote most of it yesterday, just have to finish it off tonight and find some pretty pictures. Keep you in suspense ;-)
Good read.
Congrats Ben!
I've got SO much to learn...
See you down Richmond soon,
Keith
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