Greenies & Meanies: The SaltFree October Weekend
Posted By Sam Kirby on 26 October 2003
SaltFree are a gang of freediving buddies, based at the National Diving Centre (NDC) in Chepstow, UK. We come from all corners of the United Kingdom. Some of us are hardened veterans of the British Team, others are up-and-coming stars of Cyprus 2003, and quite a few newbies have found their fins this summer in our beautiful, if rather spooky green home this summer.
The NDC is a flooded quarry and the deepest inland dive site in Europe. We're very privileged to have our own 80m freedive lines there. Setting up and running the club so that everyone can both dive safely and have a laugh has been quite a challenge -- but that's another article altogether.
After several months of meets that began with training for the Cyprus 2003 competition, and never stopped, October saw the culmination of a summer's work -- the saltFree Big Weekender.
At the time it seemed a great idea: run the British Freedive Association AGM at the National Dive Centre, invite everyone to stay the weekend and come diving too. Hey, presto! A fantastic weekend for all concerned, loads of fun, loads of diving, and loads of new members for next year....
The invite went out and the RSVPs flooded back. The scrawled list in my diary had to turn into a neatly typed up sheet. The names started to resemble a Brit version of a Deeper Blue forum, and then the foreigners put their names down too. Longfins, met through DB and the closest thing I've had to a penpal since school, got in touch to say he would be in Europe and would "pop over" from Germany for the weekend. A bunch of Greek guys put their names down, and then Alun, all the way from North Wales, said he would bring some mates... it was time to check things out with Laura, the scuba safety guru.
Laura has been running our safety scuba team since she got the bug in Cyprus. Her husband, Mark, is now one our deepest freedivers so at least neither gets fed up when the other wants to spend the weekend in the water. I shouldn't have worried. As usual ,Laura had the safety team in hand. Deep cover was lined up with a rebreather diver at the ready and then the NDC offered the help of one of their Trimix guys. Shallow cover was sorted out with a few other partners of freedivers and all were equipped with the FHOF ("freediver hook on and forget" diver retrieval system). Sighs of relief all round.... if you can do that over email.
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