On the road to Hawaii
Posted By Perry Gladstone on 30 October 2002
Part 2 - September to mid-October, 2002
Vancouver
With my newly acquired 1970's in-the-field cassette recorder I faithfully recorded our warm up preparations before two-time World Record holder Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, Team Canada Coach Kirk Krack and I descended the steep stairs to the waters edge at Ansell Point. I had managed to cram the cumbersome recorder into a tight-fitting dry bag and was already into my fins before discovering that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's high-tech waterproofing measures had been compromised- the condoms fitted over the microphone had sprung a leak. Though not catastrophic like the last attempt (in which a mini-disk recorder was mortally wounded) it nevertheless seemed clear to me that this radio piece I was working on was determined to dictate its own direction. I decided the sooner I capitulated the easier it would be on me and, hiding the machine amongst the rocks on shore, caught up with Kirk and Mandy-Rae at the diving line.
Two days later, on Sept. 11th, I was back to Ansell Point with teammate Peter Pazdera and Freedive Vancouver members Greg Fee and Tyler Zetterstrom. As usual I started with a five-minute facial immersion, a signal to my body to begin inducing its diving reflexes. In the pool I do this with just a snorkel, however, in open water I have found that doing this with mask on and flooding it at regular intervals also does a good job at clearing out the sinuses.
Tyler and I took turns doing gradual Free Immersions, (a relaxed dive, pulling down and up the line with no use of the legs/fins) followed by a shallow negative pressure (exhaling before descending to replicate pressure at depth), then started our ventilations for Constant Ballast (kicking down and up). Having successfully reacquainted myself with thirty meters/100 feet my plan was to spend the next forty days leading up to the Pacific Cup of Freediving working my way down to forty meters. This, combined with my newly acquired 6:00 Static breath-hold would bring 100 points for the team (one point for each meter in Constant Ballast and one more for each 10 seconds Static).
Tyler went first, making an easy dive to 20 meters, and I did the same to 15. His next dive was to 30 and, shortly after he left the surface, I made a safety dive to 15 where I waited for him shadowing the latter part of his ascent. We had been in the water for 20 minutes and I was already getting cold. Deciding not to push it today I made one more dive so I could focus on counting my kick cycles. Kirk and I had been experimenting with a number of different techniques over the summer and had recently settled on a dolphin-kick that was more efficient than my flutter kick and helped me maintain better posture. As a result I was using up less oxygen and was much more consistent over the course of my dive.
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