Benny's Freediving Adventures

Freedive for Charity - raising money in the green.

2008-05-19T15:30:00.000+01:00

Brrrr!!!!!!!After my 9th hot chocolate I think I am thawed out again.

I'm glad to report that the dive was a resounding success, 40m was achieved but way more importantly nearly £600 was raised for Children with Leukaemia which is absolutely fantastic. In particular the DeeperBlue.net community were very generous (considering freedivers are often short of a penny), leading the donation charge.

Here's how the day went down - we arrived at Chepstow and it was an unusually warm and sunny day, not like the usual mud-pan in the carpark like the last dozen times we've dived. We expected water temps to be a bit nasty still, and this was confirmed when we jumped in - the gauges read about 10deg on the surface and we were told around 4-6 deg at depth. What struck us as amazing though was the visability - at least 15m vis which is incredibly rare and certainly the best vis i've seen there in nearly 3 years of diving there. Did I mention cold? Brr!

I had not performed a Constant Weight dive since roughly October last year so I was a bit rusty. Given the cold conditions I had a reduced warm up and jumped in 15 minutes before, did a pull down to 15m for about 45 seconds before I started shivering and headed back to the surface. I did a quicker FRC dive not long afterwards then headed for the line with 2 minutes to my offical top. At OT I packed, took off and started down the line. Equalising was ok but I noticed that the Geek Squad tshirt I was wearing (my workplace) was causing a lot of drag and I had to kick a bit harder. At around 24m I stopped kicking and started my glide which seemed pretty normal and equalising seemed ok despite the cold. my depth alarm went off at 35m and I opened my eyes and looked around to see where the cameras were. I grabbed my tag, turned, quickly posed for the vid camera (yes I am a born poser!) started my ascent, posed for another snap with the stills camera, then started up the rope with a few strong kicks. I was feeling a tug on my lanyard for a few metres then I realised that I was following the scuba diveline and not my own diveline and was dragging the comp line along on an angle. I did a 180 degree turn and followed the proper line up the rest of the way. I have to say it was hard work, partly because i'm not that fit at the moment and partly because the tshirt was creating a lot of drag so I hard to kick a lot more than normal. I got to the surface no problems, did my SP and was all smiles The following day I did a 45m dive which felt a lot easier, it's great to be back in the water again doing some monofinning.

I have to thank some people for all their help (apologies in advance if I forget anyone!!!) - Sam Kirby for letting us use the Saltfree facilities, Laura Storm and the Angels (esp Simon) for both keeping us safe and taking stills and video (and extra thanks for Laura for helping out with all the logistics, initial ideas & planning the whole thing), Dave Morgan, Anna von Boetticher and the rest of the crew for providing freedive safety, Mark Harris (and Laura) for all the early ideas and helping to put the whole project into a concept and into a reality, everyone that helped out here and there and provided support and finally to everyone that donated, you're all stars!

There should be some vid coming soon'ish, watch this space....

Freedive for Charity

2008-04-13T05:59:00.000+01:00

At the moment I work at Geek Squad, and a while back the guys were throwing around ideas of how they could raise some money for their chosen charity, Children With Leukaemia. The mentioned in an internal memo that the wackier the better. And when a freediver hears something like that it's not hard to figure out what they're planning. I thought something a bit different would be a constant weight freedive so I put my hand up for that, not even thinking that at this time of year the water is only a couple of degrees above freezing...

Children with Leukaemia is a fantastic endeavour that helps fight the fight for people who haven't yet had a chance to live their lives. They fund research and welfare programs as well as raising awareness of the disease that affects around 500 kids a year in the UK.

So on May 3rd 2008 i'll be doing a freedive at the National Diving and Activity Centre, near Chepstow. This dive will involve me diving 40m deep underwater on a single breath of air, only using a specialised fin for propulsion down and back up.

I'm getting safety support from Laura Storm and her awesome team Angels of the deep, as well as surface freedive safety from some of the crew at http://www.saltfreedivers.com/

Please visit https://www.bmycharity.com/V2/Bennoble and throw some cash my way and in turn i'll turn into an icicle for your pleasure!

On the horizon...

2008-04-13T05:54:00.000+01:00

There's a few things in the pipeline that will keep me very busy over the next few months up to the end of July.

On May 3 i'm doing a charity Constant Weight dive (more on that in another post) down at Chepstow, then the following weekend there's the The Great Camberwell Breath Hold. This is a static, dynamic & dynamic no-fins comp at a really nice 25m pool. It's a bit old and shabby looking but it has tons of character and has a cool Victorian feel to it.

Now since Egypt in December i've really been out of the training loop, in fact all the combined record and Christmas celebrating left me about 8kg bigger than what I was in December, a fact I wasn't too impressed with. So between now and then there's an awful lot of exercise going on, a complete ban of carbohydrates (the nasty kinds anyway - bread, sugar, starchy veges, alcohol - basically anything that's fun and tastes good) and a ramped up pool training schedule. Add the next problem - because of pool closures and personal holidays, i've only got about 3 pool sessions
before the comp. So naturally i've got to get it into my head that I shouldn't be expecting the same performances I was doing at the Worlds last year. Still, i'll give it a good working over though...

In between now and the end of May i'm manically doing my AIDA 3* and 4* education courses. Finding an Instructor for these courses proved to be pretty difficult but at the last moment I got lucky and have a couple of Instructors helping me out now. I just have to find the weekends to fit them in now!

The reason i'm doing the 3 & 4 star courses is that they are pre-requisites for the AIDA Instructor course which i'm enrolled to do in Egypt in mid June. I'm doing this through Freedive Dahab. Just before this course starts there is the famous Triple Depth competition at the Blue Hole, 3 days, 3 disciplines. In the past this has been an amazing competition and one i've always wanted to do, even before I left Australia. So it works out well that it's around the same time as my course, and even better that my contract at work finishes at the beginning of June which fits perfectly.

I get home at the end of June from all of that and then have a couple of weeks off before the British Depth Championships are on in Chepstow, the great Saltfree Double Dip. This comp is always a lot of fun and it's in my backyard so there's no excuse. In the past i've come 3rd and 2nd - being an Analyst that tells me that this year is my year, but hey - when have statistics ever gone right?

After all that i'm going to drink beer. A lot of beer....

Berlin Championship, 23 Feb 2008. Judging my first comp

2008-04-13T05:25:00.000+01:00

A while ago a mate, Martin Müller told me that he was organising the Berlin Championships in Germany and asked if I would be a judge for it. Martin and I met in 2006 at the World Championships in Hurghada, and we both did our Judges course in Maribor, Slovenia at the 2007 World Championships. He's one of the nicer chaps in freediving and has some grand schemes to put German freediving back into the front of the pack, as they were a few years ago.

I've done a little judging since the July 07 course - I had judged Liv Philip's Dynamic No-Fins Women's British record of 104m as well as recently Alan Barber's 127m Dynamic No-Fins Men's British record (I guess there's a resurgence of no-fins in Britain?). But essentially i've had little reason to pull out the rules since July last year, except for the occasional argument on DeeperBlue.net so I was keen to get some judging experience before heading back to Australia to do some judging back home. So quite rightly I was shitting myself at various points in the fortnight leading up to the competition day.

We arrived late on a Friday night and were supposed to meet up with Martin and few others for a late beer however we didn't realise that our hotel shut it's doors at midnight and we didn't get there until 12:15am. We called the emergency phone number and waited as it started to rain, then hail, then finally the guy came and let us in. By the time we made it to the bar (only across the road) the guys were completely knackered so we said hello, did a round of hugs then they all trotted off to bed while Pen and I had a beer and then had an amusing adventure trying to find, and order, a german kebab for dinner, then trotting off to bed a bit after 3am.

Saturday morning we got up and had brekky. Our hotel was across the road from Martin's apartment; by a strange co-incidence, Martin's apartment and Anna von Boetticher's apartment were on the same street (Anna is another german freedive friend that lives in London and Berlin - funny how freedivers seem to find each other!) , so after brekky we wandered down the road to Anna von Boetticher's house to see the guys. There were a bunch of people staying with Anna - from the UK there was Tim Money and Sara Campbell, and from the south in Konstanz was Richard Wonka, who originally came up to observe and help out but caught the bug and was co-erced into signing up not long after he arrived. All of them are good mates and it was funny seeing them together in a flat in Berlin. After a while it was fairly apparent that a couple of people were suffering from nerves as it was either their first pool comp or close to their first one. We chatted for a bit then left to catch up with Martin and Elisabeth Kristoffersen, who I was catching public transport to the pool with. Pen went off to do some sightseeing and Martin, Elisabeth and I jumped on the train.

After we arrived I started having feelings of how weird it was being there as a judge, when numerous old friends came up and said hello and were shocked when I said I was judging, not competing (my name was not published anywhere as judge). Up to that point I knew exactly nothing of what I had to do or who the other judges were. After a bit I found out who the judges were which was a pleasant surprise. Two of them, Katja Kedenburg and Hans Pütz had judged me in my very first competition in Greene, Germany in January 2006. To be judging next to them 2 years later seemed to be a cool full circle kind of thing.

I spent a bit of time catching up with old mates, struggling to remember a couple of names initially but it all came together after a minute or three. Heard some disturbing yet funny stories too - Denmark's Henning Larsen had been shot in the eye in a hunting accident. The bullet had lodged in the corner of his eye (not the eyeball) and surgeons could not remove it. To prove this point he pulled a small magnet out of his wallet and stuck it to his eye, quite freaky yet fascinating. He was not sure what would happen with his depth diving as air could leak out of his eye socket now, which, if you think about it is probably a blessing for depth because you don't have to equalise your mask.

Plenty of old mates from past comps were running around, many I met at the 2007 World Championships in Maribor. It was awesome catching up with them all but after a while I figured out there were a ton of things I needed to do before the actual comp started.

The judges communed to one side and we had a little briefing with the organiser to get some of the basics out of the way, then the athletes ran off to get changed and start their preparations while we did some more briefing and started to discuss a few issues around the rules. Afterwards we gathered all the athletes together for a brief in German, then it was thrown over to me to do an incredibly brief brief, given I had no idea what the first guy had said and hadn't known I had to say anything at all up until that point.

Not long after was the first official top for Static, and the 45 minutes warm up beforehand was spent by the judges picking their zones, looking for stopwatches, cards, food, water (all the essential bits). A few things went missing in the preparations: a couple of minutes before OT Katja still didn't have a camera in her zone and I didn't have a timekeeper. But we were sorted out with plenty of seconds to spare.

The first person I judged was Denmark's Sanne Rasmussen, who surfaced at 4:36 and whilst clean, she wasn't happy at all and was swearing at herself and looking very disappointed. She looked that angry that I actually thought for a second that maybe she had disqualified herself and I had missed it, but I put my doubts away and awarded a white card as I saw nothing wrong. It turned out she was expecting somewhere around 5 minutes but didn't have the will to fight, something i'm all too familiar with.

So first person done, the nerves started calming down and I got into the rhythm for a bit. Then along came a German woman with her husband safetying. She performed around 3:50 I think, came up and was clean, and started into her surface protocol by taking her mask off, said "i'm ok" then gave the ok sign, which is in the wrong order (must be mask/facial equipment, ok sign, then "i'm ok"). I thought to myself "oh crap... that's a red card" and waited for the 30 seconds to expire, then told her I was very sorry but she did the SP in the wrong order and I had to give her a red card. She got a bit confused, then angry, then her husband got angry and they were both trying to tell me it was in the correct order. I repeated that it was in the wrong order and it was quite clear but they wouldn't believe me. It took both the safety diver and the timekeeper to confirm to her the result before she would get out of the pool. She certainly put the doubt in my mind as to whether she did it correctly or not, but I stuck to my guns, and after all, I had a clear view and I wasn't hypoxic at the time so I guess I should have seen it better than her!

Not long afterwards Sara Campbell came into my zone. Sara is the current Women's World Champion Constant Weight diver and has 3 depth world records, not bad for a chick that's 4 foot 11 inches! There had been a lot of media surrounding Sara and she had announced that she would be attempting to break both the static and dynamic British national records. Knowing that she had almost zero experience in the pool, I was a bit worried, as experience told me that athletes who excel in the ocean often bomb out in the pool the first time, as they have the "go hard" attitude of a competitor at the top of their game, but no experience in disciplines that are very different. This was also highlighted by info on DeeperBlue in an article about Sara saying that many people compared deep results to pool potential - a four minute dive can be doubled to give an eight minute static. This info, in my eyes is very misleading for many different reasons, so I was a bit worried that Sara was just going to go for broke and have some sort of spectacular blackout. In the end my worries were completely waylaid when she performed a lovely clean 4:34 with a perfect SP. Regardless of all the hype up in the press leading up to the comp, she was quite realistic in her expectations which was good to see.

As the Announcements increased gradually the performances started getting over 5 minutes and eventually the last person in my group came along, Denmark's world record holder Stig Severinsen. Stig's a bit of a colossal man and in every comp i've attended he has always had something to say about the rules, and I think he really does like to test the rules a bit. With that in mind I was sure he was going to really test me on some point or another, and seeing that it was Stig and it was almost the last static there was a reasonable crowd watching. Once again luck was on my side and he did a flawless 7 and a half minutes, but grumbled a bit that he wasn't sure whether to push to 8 or not. Wish I had those sorts of dilemas....

With Static now over a huge weight was lifted and it felt like I was getting into the rhythm. We had a break where we scoffed down copious bananas and apples (hadn't eaten since breakfast and it was 8pm so I was a bit delirous with hunger!) and got our sheets for the next event of Dynamic. Since there was only 2 lanes for dynamic we were judging in pairs.

Hans and I worked quite well together, he is an experienced judge and (hopefully) I picked up a lot from him. A few athletes in, the girl I had DQ'ed in static was breathing up in our lane. I wasn't sure if she hated me at that point but she definitely wasn't smiling at me. She took her last breath and took off. Her PB was somewhere around the 70m mark Hans told me, and when she got to around 70m she started looking up ahead then speeding up, two classic signals that someone is pushing hard and could well black out. She got to 100m and came up, as I was close I was right in front of her, she stared at me while she took a couple of big breaths, took her mask off, gave an incredibly large and obvious ok sign and yelled out "I AM OK", to which everyone standing around started laughing, myself included. We gave her the white card and I was relieved that I didn't have to DQ someone twice in the same comp.

Not long after we had a Belgian guy called Dirk who was an interesting character, after he took off Hans mentioned that he was colourblind. He eventually came up, did his protocol and stared kind of blankly at us for a while. Hans and I waited the 30 seconds and both gave him a white card, to which he did not react a bit and kept staring in at us for a few more seconds, until Hans and I both yelled at the same time "WHITE CARD!!!", and he smiled and hopped out of the water. I had to use every ounce of strength not to completely piss myself laughing.

Eventually we got to the big boys again, the Danes Stig and Henning. Stig did an incredibly impressive (to us mortals anyway) 203m but came up in his usual manner looking clean as a whistle and chatting away to anyone around, like he'd only swum a couple of metres. Henning came up at 200m and wasn't as chirpy as Stig but was pretty clean nonetheless.

And that was that, with the comp over we all packed up and headed to the clubhouse for some food (my stomach was eating itself by that stage) and some well earned beer. The guys at the clubhouse put on a huge meal for us all and we sat around talking, laughing and carrying on all night. There was a protest earlier in the night that took some time to deal with, it was a bit unfortunate as it was a protest from someone who didn't even compete in dynamic, protesting a white card that was given to Martin Legat. Martin had grabbed for the edge as he came up and the person that protested said that he had done the same a year earlier and had received a penalty. In essence he was protesting to highlight the fact that the particular rule is not objective and is not well understood by many freedivers. In the end we watched the video many times and had an anonymous vote of which the result was to uphold the current result.

After that, straight back to the beer! We had a presentation and after what seemed about 10 minutes, it was nearly 3am and Martin had ordered a taxi for he and Elisabeth. We jumped in with them, got home then met team England/Germany (Anna, Richard, & Tim) for a quick cocktail before bed. Not before finding a currywurst first though ;-)

The next day we trundled across the road for a wonderful brunch with Martin and Elisabeth, after which we realised we were very late for Elisabeth's train back to Aarhus. After missing it at the first station, we jumped the city train and managed to get it at the last second at it's next stop. It was way too close for comfort and poor Lizzy wasn't too impressed with us I think!

Martin gave us a wonderful tour around Berlin, including a stop at a hotel with a huge aquarium surrounding the elevator in the lobby - so cool! He also took us on trip to show us some grand plans of his - not sure how much of it i'm allowed to say so i'll shut up now.

Conclusion: Great competition, stressy but cool, brilliant city, fantastic people and mates. Couldn't ask for a better weekend really!

Big thank you to Eva and Igor for the use of their photos - ta!

Dive Profiles

2008-04-07T23:46:00.000+01:00

Here are the dive profiles of all three dives.

Free Immersion

The wiggles in the line here are where i'm pulling with the same hand my dive computer is on. I took my last pull at around 27m and started my freefall, though I took another pull at around 35m.

Variable Weight

You can see on this profile the slow start of the sled, then at around 15m it starts picking up speed. Despite a little narcosis a fairly quick transition at the bottom and i'm off to the surface in no time.

No Limits

Similar start though it's a little quicker because there's no monofin causing drag. This time there was quite a bit of narcosis and so it took me a bit more time to fill up the bag and get on my way, though much much better than my first few attempts. I planned on jumping off the sled at around 40m but the narcosis got to me and I was enjoying myself too much. I'd let go by around 15m and grabbed the rope at 10m to slow down the last remaining metres.

And the crowd goes wild.... 'ish

2008-03-01T13:14:00.000Z

It's been a while since my last post, that's a combination of laziness as well as waiting for a few media articles to come out. A press release was sent out to a few media outlets, chiefly a couple of national papers back in Australia and a couple of magazines. I must say I was quite disappointed by the take up in Aus - Australian media is funny at the best of times, they will happily have half a page in the paper about a neighbour digging a hole in their backyard or a dog that got stuck in a cat flap, but when it comes to something with a bit more substance they don't particularly care. And with freediving in particular they are very strange - with the amount of backard pools in Australia there are a number of drownings each year and so they attribute that to freediving. I remember the local dive store being interviewed once about the dangers of freediving when a kid died doing laps underwater and being egged on by his mates - when he eventually blacked out they thought he was joking and jumped on his back. Tragic stuff but what does that have to do with freediving or apnea? It's that sort of attitude in Australia that holding breath = death that really stifles any media attention. Do I sound bitter enough yet? It happens quite a bit here in the UK too - I remember in October 2007 England had a horrible sport weekend - amongst other things they lost the Rugby World Cup to South Africa and Lewis Hamilton choked and lost his world championship. However the spark of the weekend was that Sara Campbell had nailed 3 world records in 3 consecutive days, a feat never achieved by anyone, let alone a Brit. Back in London the weekly Sport Magazine had a column for "good week for, bad week for" which had one sentence on Campbell. A few pages on there was a full page story on a 15 year old that was playing ping pong in China. No wonder this country's screwed at sport (whoops, did I just say that??). Anyway whinge over....

One article that did make it to press in Aus was my local paper, which was a strange little experience. Late one night I was on Skype talking to Mum and Dad and I mentioned that there might be something in the paper to watch out for. After a bit we said goodbye and I was just about to shut the computer down when Mum rang back and said that a reporter was on the landline and was asking questions about me. She told the reporter I was online and she would call me so he could ask questions. So before I could figure out what was really going on, he would ask Mum a question, Mum would repeat the question to me, then hold the home phone up to her computer speakers so the reporter could hear my responses. So in effect I was being interviewed by Mum. In freediving context i've been interviewed in the past by BBC Radio, i've been live to air on Egyptian television but being interviewed by my mum was the single most weird thing i've had to do in a long time.
Mum: Are you worried that something will go wrong and you'll die Ben?
Ben: Ummm, errrr... no mum, i'm not going to die
Mum: It's a very dangerous sport isn't it Ben?
Ben: ummmm... well.... not really if you have proper safety in place which we alwa...
Mum: But haven't some people died?
Ben: ah... (sweating) there have been a couple of incidents..

Anyway you get the point.... some things you don't really want to explain to your mum. The article ended up quite good - a couple of misquotes here and there and a couple of "death defying crazy extreme sport" kind of references but i'd always be surprised if they didn't put that angle on it. And they used a great photo from Laura Storm so it was great to see her awesome photography getting another plug. Mum and Dad were a bt chuffed because they sent a photographer around to the beach to take a photo of them. I think until that point they thought it was all a bit of a joke. They were loving it when the paper came out - people were stopping them in the street so they had a bit of celebrity status for a couple of weeks, bless 'em.

Click on the article to read.

In the March edition of Diver Magazine there was an article on both Mark and I. The main focus was on Mark which understandable as it was supposed to be focusing on the British side of things. But I got a mention so it goes on the list.

On the internet there were a couple of bits and pieces, including Deeper Blue, an international underwater website and the Diver magazine online. Here's a couple of them:

http://www.deeperblue.net/newsfull.php/1665

http://www.britishfreediving.org/

http://www.divernet.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?id=6680&sc=1080&ac=d

http://altsaint.blogspot.com/2007/12/dahab-depth-demons.html

Matt Kitchen provided some superb footage that he edited together, here is the YouTube version:

Finally, here are some of the links to photos around the traps - you may recognise some already as i've borrowed extensively:

Mine
http://flickr.com/photos/79809474@N00/sets/72157603440321152/

Sam Kirby's
http://flickr.com/photos/samdive/sets/72157603431512309/

Laura Storm's
http://flickr.com/photos/rebel-angel/sets/641988/?page=4
These are spread around a bit so if you get lost go here http://flickr.com/photos/rebel-angel/sets/641988/ and they should be around page 4 or so. Well worth searching around though.

Game, set match. Thank you ref, thank you ballboys...

2008-01-10T15:35:00.001Z

We came, we saw, we conquered. We snorted saltwater, coughed blood, ate camel, got rope burn, got colds, got better, strained muscles, got flu's, made numerous dashes to the toilet, saw dead dogs, cats, camels and corals, saw live ones too, saw what Harrods chocolates can do to two ladies stuck in the desert, we inhaled, we exhaled, we inhaled more and more and more, got chaffed lips, threw up, rinsed sinues, and threw up again. But not all at the same time.

We dived, dived and dived. And somewhere in the middle we got our National records. Mark got the British National Records for Free Immersion (64m) and Variable Weight (80m), whilst I got the Aussie National Records for Free Immersion (50m), Variable Weight (72m) and No-Limits (80m). It was gut wrenching to watch Anne-Marie get sicker and sicker until she couldn't dive any more, particularly as we were going in the oppposite direction and getting over our illnesses as we went along.

Going from the initial discussion of record setting through to the finished event there were a whole legion of butler monkeys doing our bidding. Without them we would have been stuffed, plain and simple. Hopefully i'll remember them all here, and if not then i'm sure the Edit button still works for when I am reminded what a twat I am a bit later. So anyway, in no particular order here is a bunch of thankyou's...

Anne Marie Kitchen-Wheeler was a great team mate and provided us with support and encouragement, hopefully next time the gods will smile a bit more on her.

Sofus Kreutzmann was in Dahab to do a little training but ended up spendin 95% of his time safetying for us, a huge endeavour given it was his holiday time. He also busied himself with everything else like setting up the training lines to pulling the ridulously heavy sled up from depth. With Sofus's help it allowed us to relax a bit and concentrate on the job at hand. Plus he's a great guy to hang around anyway so i'm glad we were blessed with his company.

Katerina Smirnova, the Ukranian who was on an extended holiday in Egypt graciously took on the job of chief AIDA cameraperson, sitting in the cold wind filming our dives - thanks a lot Kat!

All the local guys that helped out - There were a couple of Mohammed's around that helped us to no end - Mohammed the driver who took us out to the Blue Hole everyday and back, Mohammed in the restaurant that stored our equipment and waited on us hand and foot as well as the other guys in the restaurant that treated us like royalty. Nicer guys are impossible to find!

Sam Kirby - luckily Sam was out in Dahab the same time as we were and made herself more than available to help safety, take photos, pull ropes and pitch in all over the place. And somewhere in the middle she got a bit of depth and started feeling the love again. After seeing Sam teach non-stop for a year and not do any diving herself it was nice to see her with the monofin back on.

Our safety scuba team.... where do you start? Wilfry and Dean - cool guys. Dean in particular was cool because he is a Canadian extreme sport sort of dude that wears a bandanna, does extreme-type activities and says things like "gnarly" all the time. Everytime he opened his mouth it was to stoke our egos so he was a pleasure to hang out with. The guys did some long dives without (much) complaint so a big thanks to the lads.

Matt Kitchen - safety scuba and videographer. A HUGE amount of cred for this guy. As a freediver, AIDA judge, BFA committee member and coach/hubby he knows the sport back to front and gave us tons of advice. As a scuba safety guy he also did some long dives and made sure we stayed safe. As a Videographer he put in a herculian effort to film all our record dives as well as some of our training one. Matt is a stunning video man but it was only afterwards that we saw the rest of his video talent when he presented us with the finished video - high quality footage matched with rockin beats and edited perfectly (i'll post up a link shortly). I can't imagine how much time went into it and all of it off the cuff - we never asked for any of it! Thanks Matt.

Laura Storm - shining star and rock goddess! Laura was instrumental in all of our preparations
- from offering advice on safety setups and various diving configurations to decompression advice, putting the scuba team together, diving tirelessly, keeping our spirits up when we were starting to snap, keeping us hydrated, motivating us to do our best and keeping us in check when we all went a bit silly. And on top of that taking some stunning photos as well, most of the photos i've used on the blog are from her talented hand. Simply brilliant, that chick.

Lotta Ericson and Linda Paganelli - owners of Freedive Dahab and all the equipment we used as well as our judges. I can't imagine how shitty that week would have been without these guys. Not to far away from our target dates we had a few worries with equipment maintenance and prices and for a little bit we were unsure if it was even going to go ahead. However the guys put a lot of work in to make sure everything was ok for our arrival. When we first saw the rig we realised how much work it would have taken to lug it all out there and moor it in place. They were incredibly friendly, supportive, flexible and gave us a safe environment to train in each day. No-one lost their cool and they made everything stress free for us, which was great seeing as we would find just about anything stressful each day! Thanks so much guys.

Mark Harris - my teammate, training buddy, mentor, lifestyle co-ordinator and fashion consultant. Whenever i'm frazzled by anything Mark seems to be able to put the logic back in and things make sense again. Training and competing with Mark has given me a wealth of knowledge and experience and he is one of the most selfless people around. He pretty much single-handedly organised our whole excursion and made sure everything ran to plan. Great Britain is a much better freediving nation because of him! Thanks for everything mate.

Finally, the love of my life, the cheese and kisses, my wife Pen. Being a freedive widow is a pretty hard thing but she manages to do it with style. She also keeps me sane and puts perspective in my life. Love you babe!

Oh and how can I forget my fans...

Right, I think that's about it for now. The task at hand now is to get back into normal life after such a brilliant holiday. Wish me luck....

Game Day - Record Day 2, Sun 9/12/07

2008-01-06T16:50:00.000Z

I woke up at 7am again and stumbled around getting dressed, determined to be eating by 7:20am. The day before I could still feel brekky settling while I warmed up, not a particularly pleasant feeling even though it was nearly 4 hours after breakfast. At the breakfast buffet the Gods had decided to really piss me off today, no peppers for my omelete and not a banana in Africa. I ended up having half an omelete caked in salt on half a brown piece of toast and a couple of mouthfuls of tinned fruit. Mmm, breakfast of champions....

Most of the previous evening I spent wondering what I should have gone for the following day. Now the following day was here, I still hadn't really made up my mind. The dilemma was as follows: I wanted 3 records. I had 2 already (Free Immersion and Variable Weight) and had the option of extending Free Immersion today, before the No-Limits dive. I had to go for Free Immersion first because of logistical reasons - we would have killed our helpers trying to lug the rope up and down all day. But if I buggered Free Immersion up I could not go for the second dive. So should I go for Free Immersion again? The week was taking it's toll and I was starting to get pretty tired from diving everyday, normally i'd have a rest day for every 2 days of diving. But I was pretty sure I could get to at least 53m, as traditionally my equalisation gets better the more I dive, other things being equal. However No Limits was the main reason I was out there, I could have done Free Immersion back in England if I wanted to. So after brekky I decided that the day would be for No Limits only. I could feel the relief already, even though I still hadn't decided a No Limits depth...

Mark on the other hand had a busy day. He had decided to to the Variable Weight dive first as it was relatively easy for him. The idea was to build the confidence up with the first dive then go in strong for the for the second Free Immersion dive. The previous day's dehydration issues were clearly gone given Mark's constant trips to the loo so I had a feeling it would be a good day.

Sitting in the restaurant I was mulling many thoughts around in my head - I was definitely only doing No Limits, but how deep? I had been as deep as 76m in training, and I needed 78m to go deeper than any other Australian had ever officially gone. Mark was doing 80m for his Variable Weight dive, so then my accountant's logic mixed with my testosterone (a scary mix...) said that if I went first and had a go at 80m, I would bring the sled back for the next dive and there would be no need for hauling the sled + rope up 80m. Plus I probably had an ok chance of doing 80m so bugger it, lets give it a go. Makes sense doesn't it?

We headed out for the last time, did our warm ups for the last time and prepared ourselves. I had a couple of niggling thoughts - this was the first time I had done a deep sled dive without a deep Free Immersion dive first. I didn't know whether that was a good thing or not but it made me wonder. Second thing was that this was the first time I had done a proper No Limits dive. Every other sled dive had been Variable, with the exception of a 30m dive the first day. Things might be a little different and hopefully it wouldn't phase me too much.

After the warm ups I positioned myself on the sled and did some slow breathing. The wind was worse today and there was a reasonable chop on the surface. I gave Linda the 2 minute signal and did my final breathing. I waited for a lull in the waves then inhaled, packed and packed and packed, let go of the brakes and I was away. The first thing I noticed was that I was going faster in the first 20m, due to me not wearing the monofin which caused a lot of water resistance. For the first 30m I concentrated on lots of equalising and making sure my mask was well equalised. Past 30m my equalising slowed down and I enjoyed the scenery as gradually the Arch opened itself to me again. As I got past 50m I started mouthfilling for equalisation and sank even quicker into the darkness. After 60m I concentrated on equalising earlier if I had any chance of making it to 80m. I started getting a bit warm and fuzzy as the narcosis started and when my alarm went off at around 70m I managed to get a mouthful of air and equalise again. Not knowing how deep I was at the time I equalised again and promptly came to a halt with a big bang on the bottom plate. This caught me off guard partly because of the narcosis and partly because I still had a mouthful of air, something I had never had at the bottom of any of my sled dives before. I slowly reached down and started turning the knob on the tank to take me back up. Things seemed really slow, and my skin was tingling all over and I remember being so chilled out that I really didn't want to go back up, but I knew I had to. Eventually the bag started filling and the sled started moving up. I was holding the handlebars, looking up and thinking I was Superman I was that narked.

On the way back up I wanted to jump off the sled half way and make my way slowly back up, to help avoid any decompression issues, plus I didn't want to go all the way on the sled and then get thrown around on the surface with the airbag and sled bouncing around everywhere. So after some time I unclipped my lanyard, and waited until I thought I was about half way. But seeing as how narked I was I mistimed it completely and ended up jumping off at around 20m because I saw my safety diver the second I ditched the sled. I grabbed the line to slow my ascent, looked up to see the sled bubbling like mad and gradually made my way up the last 15m. I surfaced on the wrong side of the airbag and had to lean over it to get to the rope to steady myself. Clearly I was still narked because when I took my mask off I was smiling away to myself as I did my protocol. I waited until the 30 seconds was up and got the ok from the judges and did my girliest gleeful squeal to date. Successful 80m dive!

After we did the business of checking gauges and other bits and pieces I went on the 02 and it was Mark's turn on the sled (contrary to the video which has his Free Immersion dive first... bit of dramatic license there!). He was also doing 80m but doing it Variable Weight. Fortunately
he had an absolutely flawless dive and came up fresh as a daisy. A while after that he was ready for his Free Immersion dive. After he took off it was apparent something was wrong not far into the dive but we weren't sure what and he kept going. A couple of minutes later he surfaced and did his surface protocol and got his record. The problem that had occurred earlier on was that at about 5m down he had knocked his noseclip off, meaning water was flooding into his nose and sinuses. Instead of aborting the dive, he grabbed his nose with one hand and pulled himself down single handedly, something i've never heard anyone doing and one of the ballsiest things i've ever witnessed. Both of us couldn't wipe the grins off our face as we headed back to shore.

As a celebration, Linda and Lotta had arranged for picnic dinner in an oasis in the desert under the stars for us all. We trekked out in 4x4's to the location, a stunning canyon. We went to a spot and watched the sunset, when we returned Linda had lit dozens of candles on the side of a cliff, it looked stunning. We also had a few drinks - when we were at the liquor store we noticed a bottle of champagne-looking stuff that was called AIDA.... we had to have a couple of bottles of that! (for the non freedivers, AIDA is the International Freediving governing body). We ate some brilliant bedouin food including some Camel kofta, we all sang our national anthems (Aussie, British, Danish, Swedish, Italian and Ukranian). We headed back to the hotel later on a bit tipsy, with full bellies and absolutely exhausted.

So that was that! A lazy start to the day and a big big breakfast then we started the long trek back to London.

Little bit more to come....

Game Day - Record Day 1, Sat 8/12/07

2007-12-21T15:49:00.000Z

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 easy 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....

Training Day 4, Friday 7/12/07

2007-12-21T15:24:00.000Z

Wasn't feeling the best this morning, starting to feel a bit fatigued from each day's training. Normally i'd do 2 days training and take 1 day off, but since we're only here for a short time we don't really have that luxury. Everyone else is starting to feel the same way too, sickness aside we're all a bit knackered. We got to the Blue Hole today to find it unseasonably cold and very very windy with larger waves being chopped up than we've had so far. I had my goal of 50m FIM and 70m Variable in mind, though was thinking of adjusting these given the conditions. My cold had also resurfaced during the night thanks to the cool breeze that's been hounding us. When we jumped in the water it was much warmer than the air, and a few metres down all the chop subsided and it was lovely and clear. I did my warm ups which were a bit better than the previous day, then put Mark's lanyard on and started my final breath up. I duckdived and started my descent, feeling not that bad but not superb either, I tried to concentrate on long slow arm strokes. In the sink phase I kept reminding myself to mouthfill and equalise and something must have been working because it was a bit easier than the previous day. My gauge went off at 45m and I managed another small equalisation and glided until I was pretty sure I was at 50m or a bit over it. I opened my eyes and I saw a massive cavern right in front of me... the Arch! The Arch is a big hole in the side of the Blue Hole that is about a bit over 50m deep. In all my Variable Weight dives i'd been looking for it but have never seen it thus far, so I was pretty excited, well as excited as I could get for someone trying to stay calm. I turned and started heading for the surface, felt a bit of fatigue in my arms but generally it felt easier than the previous day. Linda met me around 20m and we glided to the surface together and I did my surface protocol no problems. A quick check of the gauge told me i'd done a 52m dive so I was very happy with that. After disconnecting the lanyard I headed over to the Oxygen cylinder for a couple of minutes of decompression. Later on we got the sled ready and approached our Variable dives. Mark went first and did a great PB, which we later found out was a bit of an accident as he had taken his hand off the brake and then couldn't relocate it. Oh well, whatever gets you down there ;-) I was up next and told Linda my attempted depth (65-70m), expected time, did my breath up, packed and took off. The sensations of a sled dive are still a bit weird and I was struggling not to release too much air to equalise my mask on the way down. After 30m the sled sped up and we rattled all the way down to 60m when my alarm started beeping. Linda had given me some advice before my dive so I was thinking of this as I did my last equalisation and rode it down a bit further. When I could not equalise again I hit the brakes straight away. At this point I realised I was pretty narked as I remember being confused and lifting the airbag up so it would fill, turning the gas tap on, then realising that I hadn't climbed off the rig yet and my knees were locked in by my monofin! Shite! (you see the sled has "handlebars" that you sit behind your knees. With a monofin you have to kind of lock your knees in place then release them one by one at the bottom). I quickly turned the gas tap off and got my knees free of the sled and turned the air back on. Eventually the bag filled and I turned the tap off and it took off to the surface. I gave a pull on the rope and started monofinning back up, thoroughly dazed and confused. When it started getting lighter I looked up the line and Linda was waiting for me. Once again we glided up together and I got to the surface, did my surface protocol, looked at my gauge and once again gave a sheepish grin which was part narcosis and part guilt as I said "oops" and showed her my gauge... 76m! We all had a bit of a cheer and then she shooed me off to the oxygen tank for 10 minutes of decompression. At lunch there were smiles all round, both Mark and I hadn't thought we'd do anything like we'd done today, Sam Kirby had a great day just mucking around and seemed to find the love again, Anne-Marie had some earlier mental issues but managed to find the love again at the end, and Sofus our Danish mate just had a good time helping us and got a decent Constant Weight dive in again. Smiles all round! As we rode back into town in the Jeep we all had a bit of a collapse and everyone now is really knackered. A quiet evening tonight and records day tomorrow....

Training Day 3, Thursday 6/12/07

2007-12-21T13:34:00.000Z

Had a good day today. Had my usual half an omelete with a piece of brown toast and banana, at this stage i'm too superstitious to go for anything else. After brekky was feeling a bit too full which I don't like before diving. Did my usual sinus rinse with usual gag but this time no follow through, like Tuesday. Today was actually cloudy which is pretty rare for these parts, but luckily this also meant that the winds we've been having had died down. When we got to the Blue Hole conditions were absolutely brilliant, good vis, warm water and no swell at all. As we waited to jump off the pontoon there were a school class of New Zealand kids snorkelling. It was funny hearing all the kiwi accents and almost reminiscent of a scene at Bondi Beach. Anne-Marie ended up taking some time to show one poor lad how to put his mask and snorkel on which was pretty funny. In the water I did my usual prep dives, a little shorter than normal because it was only 3 hours since brekky and I could still feel myself digesting. My sinuses were feeling a lot better, not far off 100% now. Mark did his big dive - a free immersion one and had a great result. After he jumped off I moved over to the pyramid and started my final breath up. During this we had all manner of wanker tourist snorkellers (not the kiwi kids, they were fine) coming over and grabbing our setup to have a discussion with each other and yell and laugh and generally get in the way. After they were shooed off I finished my breath up, packed and took off. The first 20m felt pretty good and I stopped pulling at about 25m and let myself drift down. I'd taped a 0.5kg weight to my neckweight and this was helping me fall straight, unlike yesterday when my legs were trying to overtake my head. In the 30m area I kept filling my mouth with air and losing it, this continued right into the 40's until my alarm went off at 45m and I kept drifting down until I felt a little pressure. Turned and headed back up starting to feel the urge to breath reasonably early. Lotta met me at 20m and I had a glide to the surface as I became bouyant again. Couple of breaths and did my surface protocol and checked my gauge. I ended up doing 49m which was close enough to my target of 48m so I was pretty happy another PB was in the bag. We then readied the sled for some variable weight. After yesterday's 60m dive I was a bit hesitant to put too much depth on today as the risk of lung barotrauma is very real when big jumps are made at these depths. I set my alarm for 55m and would see how I go. I've found that my limiting factor in sled diving is equalising, it's never too much a stretch swimmng back from the depths i'm attempting. After a small breath up I check my arms are in the right spot, someone is holding my monofin up to stop it from creating too much drag and put my hand on the brake release. Take my last breath, pack and take off. The sled feels like a rocket for the first 20m as I struggle to keep equalising in time. After 20m I settle back and try and relax into the dive with my eyes shut. It's pointless trying to read my gauge as we're going fast and it gets darker fairly quickly. I start mouthfilling to try and stay on top of equalising and eventually I hear my gauge beeping at me to tell me i'm at 55m. By the time I realise that it's beeping i'm well past 55m but can still equalise. Eventually no more air comes up when I try and mouthfill so I hit the brake. I don't feel as narked this time so I know straight away to get my legs out of the sled handles, lift the air bag up, twist the handle on the air tank and fill the bag with air until it starts moving, then quickly shut off the air and let go as the whole sled shoots off. I start my ascent with some strong kicks then settle into a slower pattern 2 kicks and a glide. Lotta met me somewhere around 20m and I stopped kickng and glided the rest of the way. It's so much easier ascending not wearing 4kg of lead! I surface trying not to slam into the returned sled, breath and do a surface protocol. As I surfaced Mark was barking at me telling me to not to get so close, I was about to tell him where to go when I turned and saw a few Italian tourists that decided to use the pyramid as a gossip lounge. I laughed and checked my gauge and found it to say i'd been to 65m. Bloody hell! A bit better than i'd hoped and apart from the equalising a really easy dive. Chest and lungs felt good too, no coughing blood and squeeze. After a couple more dives from the others we headed back in for our regular lunch and post mortem. PB's for everyone, a bloody good day! Off for the nightly cocktail now and dinner in town. Dahab is growing on me day by day, it's a great little town.

Training Day 2, Wednesday 04/12/07

2007-12-20T23:12:00.000Z

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.

Training Day 1, Tuesday 3/12/07

2007-12-13T00:14:00.000Z

We arrived with pretty much no problems on Monday, got settled into the hotel and slept like zombies. Tuesday we were meeting up with Lotta Ericson and Linda Paganelli from Freedive Dahab, we were hiring the sled and their services for the week. My flatmates and I had gone to York for the weekend and it was freezing cold and wet up there, as a result i've got a nasty head cold which is not good for diving.

View from the hotel

After we met Linda and Lotta we headed to the Blue Hole, which is a spectacular hole in the ocean 92m deep and world renown amongst divers. When we got there all we saw were camels, garbage and goats. But once you arrive the ambience of the place takes over as we went into one of the restaurants, looking at the ocean you can make out a darker patch a couple of metres out which is the hole itself. After suiting up we headed out to the sled. We had a warm up line to 30m close by, the idea was to do some Free Immersion dives on this line then move to the sled line for some education on sled diving. On my first warm up I started to realise how bad my cold was when I felt the searing pain between my eyes. I could equalise my ears but my sinuses were inflamed and full of gunk. I had been taking some medication but it hadn't been too effective, so as a last resort I went back to old school nose clearing - snorting salt water. For those that haven't tried this the feeling is...weird. But, it gets a lot of the gunk out and saved me my diving day. I managed to get down to 20m but it was pretty hard going. When we moved on to the sled Lotta showed us how it worked and we all had a go. It was very weird at first - you release the brake and you fly down, apply the brake lightly and you stop dead. I was nervous that I couldn't equalise, but since I was sitting upright on the sled it was a hell of a lot easier. My first dive I went to about 10m then had a fiddle with the air tank to make sure I knew what I was doing, released the air into the balloon that shot me back up to the surface and came up with a grin from ear to ear. Sled diving rocks! I made it to 30m in my last session then we called it a day, heading back to the restaurant to chill out and eat. Back to the hotel in the afternoon exhausted and into town for dinner that night. We walked past the places where the bombs went off back in 2006, which was a bit surreal as the place is so laid back and casual.

Project Triple Dip

2007-12-02T20:53:00.000Z

I've always been a bit curious about sled diving, seeing as it was the first form of freediving i'd seen, via the movie The Big Blue. But in Australia there wasn't really anywhere with a sled setup for use. I'd also had a fondness for Free Immersion (FIM) since doing a lot of it in late 2005 at the SETT Tank in Portsmouth. I had planned on attempting FIM in competition sometime but hadn't had the opportunity. It's not contested often and when it was I was not able to go to the comp. So about 9 months ago Mark Harris mentioned to me that he was thinking about doing some sled I jumped at the chance and told him i'd be in on it. Soon after we got talking about available records and I decided to go for 3 records, Free Immersion, Variable Weight and No Limits. We were both on track until April and the tragic passing of Loic Leferme in a No Limits training accident. After a bit of soul searching and discussion with friends and loved ones Mark decided to concentrate on Variable and Free Immersion and I decided to continue with the original plan. Mark got in touch with Lotta Ericson from Freedive Dahab about using their facilities. After a while we got dates locked in for the first week of December, after all the big competitions had finished.

We've had a few issues here and there, our first flight was cancelled and the travel company tried to worm out of giving us a refund, we had hitches with the equipment and the Egyptian government but come hell or high water we were heading to Dahab....

What the hell is Freediving?

2007-11-30T11:04:00.000Z

I constantly get blank looks from people when I mention that I freedive, which are actually better than a lot of comments I get, such as "right, so how high do you dive then?", "you guys are mad, i'd never parachute from anything" or what one guy said when I said I was competing in the world champs in Egypt "right.... so where do you do that, in the Nile?".

So.... here is the layman's guide.

Freediving is anything where you hold your breath underwater. Over the years a few different disciplines have been invented, but essentially it's all snorkelling at it's finest. In competitive freediving there are probably around 25o-300 athletes competing in Here is a run-down of the different disciplines, divided into 2 groups - those in the pool (non-depth) and those in open water (depth) :

Pool

Static Apnea - holding your breath for as long as possible, usually lying on the surface. This is a simple test of breath hold, and is very challenging considering all you're doing is lying there, as mentally you can be all over the place thinking of reasons why you don't need to be holding your breath. My best in comp in this is 5 minutes 20 seconds, though I did 5:44 recently but got disqualified on a technicality. In training i've done over 6min a couple of times. Since i've not done any successful competition statics this year I don't have a world ranking. Last year's ranking was 121st. In Australian all time ranking i'm 6th.

Dynamic with fins - travelling horizontally underwater attempting to cover the greatest distance on the one breath. You can only use a pair of fins or a monofin (big dolphin tail thing you strap your feet into) for propulsion. My personal best (PB) was set in competition in the World Championship this year at 132m, ranking me 64th in the world, 3rd in Australia.

Dynamic without fins - same deal but no fins are allowed. The athlete typically does a split breast stroke, averaging around 3-5 arm strokes per 25m. It's very slow and energy efficient. Technique is crucial in this one, so I have spent a lot of time working on this, as hydrodynamically i'm like a fridge in a wetsuit. I'm currently ranked 37th, 2nd in Australia.

Open Water

Constant Weight - the freediver descends and ascends a rope to a pre-determined depth. They can use fins or a monofin and/or their arms but no other method of propulsion. They can't hold the rope or use the rope, it is a guide only. They can't take weight during the dive, hence the name. This is the big freedive discipline that everyone considers the most pure and/or important. My best in comp is 52m from 2006 though i've done 55m in training. World ranking 65th, Aus ranking 3rd.

Constant Weight No Fins - same deal but no propulsion methods at all. Probably the hardest of all the disciplines as you don't have much propulsion in your arms and legs and at depth you become heavier. Definitely the purest of all the disciplines. My PB was set in comp this year at 37m - world ranking 13th, Aus ranking 2nd.

Free Immersion - The freediver dives underwater without the use of propulsion equipment, but only by pulling on the rope during descent and ascent. This one doesn't make it into comp very often. I haven't done this discipline yet, but watch this space...

Variable Weight - The freediver descends with the help of weight and ascends using his own strength: arms and/or legs, either by pulling or not pulling on the rope. Mostly the freediver used a sled on the rope, which is basically a piece of metal with handlebars and a brake and lots of weight. The diver rides this down, leaves it at the bottom and makes their own way back up. Because the freediver uses weight to get down, the depths are a bit deeper than those in the self-propelled disciplines. I haven't done this before but once again, watch this space...

No-Limits - no rules as such, the diver gets down as deep as they can and come back whichever way they want. Usually it's a sled down and at the bottom they fill a baloon with air from a tank and the balloon brings them back up. Typically deeper than anything else and more dangerous. There have been a couple of deaths in the past but these have been at fairly extreme depths. This and Variable Weight are not competed in, only record attempts are performed.

Now you know all there is to know about freediving. It's been around for hundreds of years, from the Japanese and Korean Ama divers to the Greek sponge divers. As a sport it's been around for probably 50 years. Much bigger around the Med than elsewhere such as Australia, which is no surprise as the history is there. Growth wise it's picking up every year, more and more people take up the sport and start competing, comps are getting bigger and better organised every time.

A Brief History of Time...

2007-11-29T15:00:00.000Z

I suppose I should share a bit on how you ended up reading this blog. I grew up in a rural part of Australia, not far from the beach. As a youngster we had a pool in the back yard and my brother and I used to do plenty of laps underwater. Mum has some good swimming genes so we both got into it quite a bit, though neither of us did any proper training. I remember going to a family friend's farm when I was probably 7 or so and swimming in their creek, we had a competition to see who could swim to the bottom. I remember getting to the bottom in what seemed like 50m deep murky water and picking up a rock and bringing it back up. In hindsight it was probably about 5m deep but hey, I was pretty small back then. When I was about 10 I could do 2 and a half laps underwater in the pool, so roughly 30m. When I was 12 we moved to the beach and I started bodyboarding more and did a little bit of snorkeling but not that much.

In 1990 I saw a movie called The Big Blue on tv, we taped it and I still have the tape now. It's a story about 2 freedivers in a rivalry and diving deeper than anyone else in the world. A real romantic kind of story which got me hooked on the sport from that point. Now though you talk to any freediver and they'll say they watched The Big Blue as a kid and fell in love with the sport, but they secretly cringe now as the movie is a bit over the top, and Rosanna Arquette is possibly the most annoying person alive. After that I went to uni in a town hundreds of miles from the ocean and then moved to Sydney and put aside all watery things for a bit.

On my honeymoon in 2004 we went to Fiji and I managed to get down to about 13m a few times on some of the reefs. On our daily snorkelling excursions I met a guy that had a set of freediving fins (ridiculously long looking flippers) so I got chatty with him, turned out Rick lived in the next suburb from me in Sydney. Before we could exchange details or anything he ended up getting gastro and I didn't see him for the rest of the trip. Back in Sydney I hunted on the internet for a couple of months and found out that there is a whole competitive sport based around this crazy nonsense. I found a shop that sold freedive equipment and went in to buy some fins. The first person I spot was Rick looking at some wetsuits. Not long after we started spearfishing together, then eventually a freedive course was offered in Sydney by Wal Steyn, the best freediver in Australia and one of the best in the world. Out of all of the guys on the course, only myself and another guy, Nathan kept training. We trained twice weekly for a year and a half and kept in touch with Wal and met a couple of other Sydney freedivers along the way. Late in 2005 we moved to London and I started going to some competitions over here, including 2 World Championships. My best rankings in comp have been 2nd in the British Championships in 2007 (Wales), the Apnoe Greene Pool Comp in 2006 (Germany) and a 3rd in the SaltFree Summer Splash (Wales) in 2006.

Welcome to Benny's Freediving Adventures

2007-11-28T19:31:00.000Z

It seems these days nothing you do is real unless you do it on the internet. So i'm joining the rest of the mob and reporting my life as it happens. Well not everything, just the bits that relate to freediving, which is, well, everything. I'm doing this for reasons twofold - firstly, I am essentially a lazy bugger and if I see things written down it will hopefully inspire me or make me feel guilty enough to keep up a training regime. Secondly, i'm about to head off on a project i've been working on for a long time, and I figure friends reading a blog at their leisure will be better than emailing the world and sundry with pages of crud. So welcome to Benny's Freediving blog!