World Record Diary -- Part VIII
Posted By Tanya Streeter on 31 July 2003
Saturday, July 12th, 2003
The wind was almost still this morning as I stretched on the balcony with my breakfast protein shake. As usual, Paul and Gilles returned from breakfast around 7:45am, Paul to grab the dive bag and camera, and Gilles to keep me company getting himself organised for another quarter of an hour. We made our way down to the boat at 8am. We have almost all the divers here and the boat is much more crowded than in the first couple of weeks on the shallower dives. We left the dock promptly and by 8:40am I was in the water beginning my warm-up while the divers had a briefing upstairs on the boat. The rope was straight with little up-and-down pitching due to much calmer sea, at last. In the last 10 minute countdown I yawned repeatedly. I felt calm, but not that calm! At zero I packed a little, but much less than I have been, and left the surface quickly. Taps at 70m/230ft so I placed my hand on the brake, ready to slow the sled. My right ear was slow to clear, and twice I had to tip my head to the left to help the Eustachian tube open. Then Andre tapped to signal I was just a few meters from the bottom. In a total descent time of a minute and ten seconds I reached the bottom of the rope, at 105m (344ft), and without any hesitation I reached up to make my first pull on the rope. My hand swiped but grabbed nothing. It startled me a little, and the divers a lot. I swiped again, gripped the rope and pulled calmly away from them. Just over 30m later I stopped pulling and began to kick strongly for another 30m. Soon after hearing the 50m taps I switched again to pulling up the rope, and noted that it was unusual not to see the flashes of Phil's strobe taking pictures around 40m. As I pulled and glided towards the surface I traveled faster and faster as my lungs and suit re-expanded, past Phil then joining Paul. Around 10m from the surface, I stopped pulling and floated like a cork to the surface. Another good dive, and I felt strong. The total dive time was 2 minutes and 56 seconds, so the ascent time was a minute and 46 seconds.
The divers, who were in pairs at 105m, 70m, 50m and 20m had a long deco ahead of them -- the deep pair are now into more than 2 hours of deco -- so I had time to do some teaching. I gave Patricia my fins and weightbelt and took her camera from her. While she got comfortable descending to around 20 feet and swimming around, I helped her with her breathing and snapped some pictures. The sea was lovely again today. Endless blue. Once again we were visited by a massive wahoo. At first glance it's size and movement led Paul and I to believe it was a reef shark, but as it's grey shape got closer (with it's mouth wide open!) we could see it was a wahoo as big as me! From a couple of meters away we could see it's stripes and incredible strength. The divers on the deco bar got a good view of it too, as well as an inquisitive barracuda.
The staff at Guiseppe's are very tolerant of us. This afternoon we descended on them, assuming our regular table, which basically takes over a third of the restaurant, just as they opened the doors. Then, like a swarm of locusts, we hover around the buffet piling our plates like only hungry divers can! Phil eats more than the rest of us combined, I think, and I have no idea where he puts it all!
The video team met again in Brien's room and I headed off for my nap. At around 3:30pm I did a live interview on Scuba radio and then a few minutes later a long interview for the Miami Herald, which will probably run on Wednesday of next week. The journalist, Sue Cocking, has been following my progress for a few years now and is a keen supporter of freediving. It's always a pleasure to talk to her and to know that she will write good things about our sport.
The other notable thing that happened today is that Gilles, who relocated from Comfort Suites a couple of days ago, finally moved his all of his dive and video out of our room! For more than 2 weeks we have not been able to see the floor in our room, because it was simpler for him to leave his gear here than carry it back and forth from Comfort Suites. He had a couple of nights in a room in the French Village here at Beaches, which is still a fair distance from the dive shop, but now, at last, he has a room next to us. And his stuff is gone from our room! He still seems to spend a lot of time here though........but we love him anyway!
The last 2 divers arrived from Canada, Pat and Mike F. So, at dinner we had all the team members that Beaches are hosting around the table. After dinner all eight of us piled into the minivan and headed for a local watering hole called The Tikki Hut where John and his band were scheduled to play at 9pm. Some of the other divers met us there and we caught a few of the band's numbers and had a couple of drinks. It's absolutely great to have all the divers here at last. After Paul and I had a boogie on the dancefloor, we headed back to the hotel, leaving a few of the divers to a later night.
- Bookmark with :
- what are these?
