After 3 days of intensive snot therapy with multiple drugs, nasal rinses and oils the sinuses are feeling a little better. The 6 of us head out to the Blue Hole again with Linda only this time and get kitted up and head out. This place is amazing, we are about 10m from the edge and in 92m water. There are scuba groups and snorkellers everywhere. Some scuba guys use our sled rope for a rest or a decompression stop, they are in for a nasty surprise if 50kg of sled comes down on them. Scubies as a general rules are pretty stupid i'm finding out, though I can't say this as the 2 other freedivers i'm with are also scubies. After swimming out to the platform and jumping on the warm up rope i'm feeling a bit better. My sinuses still squeak but they're not too bad. 3 warm ups over and I head to the main line to do a free immersion dive. Mark had just done a PB dive so spirits were good. I breath up, take my last breath, pack (packing is sucking air into your mouth and pushing it into your lungs after you've already taken a big breath - you get about 30% more air in that way) and pull myself down the line. Yesterday I was way too bouyant in the salty water so I added 1kg to my belt. When I got to about 20m I stopped pulling and started falling down the rope. After a while I noticed that I was too heavy around my waist and tipping to the side, so I corrected this by arching my back and kept falling. Equalising was hard going but I got down to my target and headed back up. Deep Free Immersion is a bit new to me so I get a bit panicky when i'm pulling myself up and still have ages to go. Eventually I got back to the surface and was clean, dive was about 47m and a bit under 2 minutes which is probably because I was a bit nervous at the bottom.
We then jumped on the sled for some fun stuff. After Mark had done his dive I was ready for mine. I did 33m yesterday getting used to the sled so today I wanted to put some proper depth in and get to about 50m. I took my last breath, packed and let got of the brake. I found equalising wasn't too bad, I got past 30m and picked up some speed and then shut my eyes concentrating on equalising and waiting for my depth alarm, set at 45m. When this started ringing I opened my eyes and had a look around. It was darker and had a serene feel to it. In the distance one thing caught my eye - a scuba diver was completely upside down and not moving. He was a perfect black sillouhette against the blue of the water and I was transfixed with this image, thinking how bizarre it was. I snapped out of it and realised that pretty soon I wouldn't be able to equalise. I hit the brake and stopped with a thud (no slowing down with this thing - it's either full throttle or nothing at all). I got my knees out of the sled seat and started looking at the sled confused and wondering what I needed to do. I lifted the airbag and started turning the valve on the scuba tank to let the airbag fill up. This was happening very slowly so I stopped and looked at it for a bit to see if it was full yet. Nope, so turned the valve back on and waited until it started moving and then yanked it shut quickly. The sled shot up and then I thought "shit.... I better go too" and started kicking up. I remember feeling quite confused about the whole thing for a while then I saw Linda safety diving me and looked up and just avoided hitting my head on the sled which had returned to the surface. I did my surface protocol smiling and Linda asked what I had done. Before the dive I had told her I wanted to do 50m, I looked at my gauge and put a sheepish smile on my face and said "oops.... might have done 60m.... hope you're not mad!" Luckily she laughed and I didn't get a bollocking. That's the deepest i'd ever been, and also the first time i'd ever had any narcosis. It was a bit weird, I was hoping for more of a happy drunk feeling because I can work under those sorts of conditions!
That evening we headed into town for dinner at the Funny Mummy. Cool name, brilliant food. We were joined by Lotta and her family over from Sweden and Sofus who had come out from Sweden to do some diving that week. We had a fantastic meal, got stared at by cats the whole time and rolled out of the place very happy and satisfied.
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