Safety Divers - Sony Open Classic 2003
Posted By Jeannette Copeland on 20 June 2003
The safety diving team, were busy for weeks in advance. The prospect of a world record being set at a depth in excess of 90 meters meant that this was no mean feet for the safety team. Gas had to be organized; this had to be shipped from Germany to Cyprus and sofnalime was shipped from the UK for the rebreathers, additional equipment included lots of cylinders, regulators and much, much more!
The safety team was managed by Steve Copeland, and his dive operation Deep
Down diving was one of the sponsors of the event. Luckily, the team was
blessed with some very experienced divers who brought a wide range of
experience to the team, but those with less in-water experience were
essential to the smooth running of the team.
Importantly, there was
an initial safety briefing which explained procedures and methods that would
be used by this new team of people! This was led by Steve and gave everyone
an opportunity to meet and to find out how the system would work. Each
evening there was a debrief about the days activities and discussion on how
to improve the next days running schedule. The support team's day started
just after 5am with collection of the gas cylinders and departure to the
barge and ended at about 8pm when the roster for the following day was
complete.
With somewhere in the region of 130 competitors, the diving was very busy and required everyone to be comfortable with the tasks ahead and none of the saefty divers had the luxury of being late in or out of the water. The video was used to verify the freedive attemps, including the world record dives, which meant it wasn’t an option to arrive after the freedivers!
The team was broadly split into three groups, although there was considerable overlap at times.
