Month: December 2009

Today was a day off for the competitors from the world championship and for most of the safety divers. Sebastian had arranged a small competition for anyone who wanted to set a national record or redeemed themselves after a failed dive during the last few days of the world championship.

There were 14 divers only 3 safety divers were required. So Matt, Aaron and Soren volunteered for the day. The day went well with several national records beaten, and a few failed dives including two black outs. “When we were warming up in the morning there were 5 squid hanging on the ropes holding the competition platform in place. They stayed close for the first few dives, but never left the blue hole, so when we were finished we played with them” Soren said.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x11mSTeTGvY]

The rest of the team spent time relaxing and recovering from the longs days spent in the water.

After the comp was completed Aaron and Soren went for a swim.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txpf5W5VZG4]

Time to get back home to eat and sleep. Tomorrow will be a big day with the CNF final.

This post have been “stolen” from Roberta and Matt’s blog: http://robertaandmattfreedive.blogspot.com/

Mask Tan” is a hazard that most freedivers face. Spending so much time on the surface, we are exposed to a lot of sunlight: however, only select parts of our bodies are exposed, so some weird tanlines result. The most common pattern is that of the eyes cheeks staying pale where they are covered by the face mask, while the rest of the face achieves a deep tan.

So, being the competitive guys that we are, a mask tan competition has developed. I submit photographic documentation of the first week of the contest:

 William Winram and Herbert Nitsch were nice enough to lend us their spear fishing gear, so we could go out and have some fun. We have now gone spear fishing twice so far and both trips have brought home dinner.

Yesterday we went out spear fishing after saftying the women’s constant weight competition. We were joined by the German freediver Heidi and her husband Mark. We started out from the beach, which is across the street from our house, and swam out to find something to catch. 

We hadn’t been swimming for to long before spotting the eagle ray shown in the video below.

 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0vwjKkbzeo]

After about 45 minutes I saw Martin go down and shot his spear into a small hole in the coral. When I dove down I could see the antennas from the large lobster he just shot. I went into our floating bucket to get the glow we brought so I could help him with the spiny catch. When he pulled out the spear and lined up for my camera, the lobster twisted so much that the spear tip twisted off. Martin let go of the lobster and went down for the spear tip, because we borrowed this gear and didn’t want to loose it. You can see this on the video and I am happy to report that we found the tip, and I was able to catch the wounded lobster again by hand and but it into the bucket.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXOQPPko_us]

After this catch we saw a small Black tip shark, which came around to see if there were anything it could eat. Unfortunately I ran out of battery and couldn’t film it, but I followed it for quite some time, because sharks are fascinating to watch when they swim.   

We found another reef, were a school of Bermuda Chub (Matt is our resident fish expert) were swimming in and out of the holes in the reef. After waiting for a while at the edge of the reef, one of the fish swam close enough that I could get a good shot. We placed the Chub in the bucket fairly quickly, but some blood did get in the water, and it only took 5 – 10 minutes, before the sharks were back. As soon as they realized that there was nothing to eat, they disappeared again.

Martin had already left and Heidi and I was trying to catch more Bermuda Chub, but they had gotten scared so we started swimming back to shore. On the way back Heidi shot another fish, which got away from her and went into a hole. After going back down, and shooting it again, the sharks were already there and she had to give the fish to the sharks.

Another amazing day of spear fishing. Other things we saw were the Lion fish below, Turtles, baracudas, a few small squid and lots of other fish.

  [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncvg0PHd3aw]

That night we had another great dinner with freshly caught fish and lobster and enjoyed the company of Heidi and Mark.

This video has been filmed and created by Sergei and it shows the work of the safety team very well.

It was a very impressive day, with 6 men diving 100 meters or more.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9shN3-YNtU]