Loic LeFerme's No-Limits Course
Posted By Kimmo Lahtinen on 25 June 2002
DAY 1 - Wednesday
Weather: overcast and windy, air temperature 16 degrees, water 13 degrees, vertical visibility 20m
The sea appeared unsettled from the plane as it descended into Nice. With the "whitetops" visible from a height of 2km, I already expected the sled course to be quite challenging. At the airport, I met CIPA representative Cederic who drove me to my hotel where I would be spending the next 5 days. I met my roommate at the hotel who introduced himself as Andrea, with very good English I might add. He had traveled from Rome Italy by car in only 7 hours!
After a couple of hours chatting, we went to a parking area near the hotel where we had arranged for the first course meeting. Of course, we already dragged our freediving gear along with us as we intended to start the course by immediately becoming familiarized with the conditions in the sea, as well as showing our diving skills to the instructors. Once at the meeting point, we met the other course students: Alban, Philippe, Steve, Yvon, Ludo, Sidney.
Once we had moved on to the diving spot, to our surprise we noticed that the diving conditions were not as bas as we had thought, in fact the sea was quite calm. The reason for this was revealed to us, that is, when our Creator made Nice's St Cap Ferrat he must have surely thought of creating a great freediving place as the sea on the other side of the peninsula is protected from the strong winds by the mountains, and hence the relatively calm conditions. In other words, the residents of Nice have ideal freediving conditions: more than 200m of water depth close to the shore and almost calm conditions in all wind conditions!
Once at the shore, we didn't spend much time admiring the conditions, but got into the water once we had informed the instructors our definite depth limits. We spent a few hours warming-up performing constant weight dives using 3 descent lines, under safe supervision. Loïc even watched every student's dives separately so that the following days would be as safe as possible for us. Once we had drunk some warm tea on the shore after the dives, and after we had agreed to start the next day at the same place after only a light breakfast, we went back to the hotel. However, a delicious evening meal awaited us at the hotel on our arrival - the French way of course!
DAY 2 - Thursday
Weather: sunny at times and windy, air temperature 17 degrees, water 13 degrees, vertical visibility 20m
Once we had arrived at the diving spot, which had become familiar to us the day before, we began day 2 with a light breakfast. Breakfast soon made way for the donning of our freediving gear, and we commenced our practice by preparatory negative dives. After this, we were introduced to the basics of freediving, the secrets of variable weight and no-limits. Safety was taken care of excellently, particularly with Steve Truglia performing his own training programme and going to 60m. Steve, who has received quite strong criticism in various freediving forums, came across as quite a humorous and nice English fellow, who approached his training with the required degree of humbleness and careful preparation and consideration.
I myself spent some of the time taking pictures of the events going on with my Nikonos V camera. I also learned from Loïc the most important lessons of my diving career, and since I have been diving all my life, it was about time.
After the dives, we spent time on the shore enjoying a nice, tasty picnic during which we had the opportunity to replenish our depleted energy stores. After a short rest, we performed diaphragm, breathing and stretching exercises. The day ended with a delicious dinner in the warmth of the hotel.
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