The Angels' Story
Posted By Laura Harris on 16 July 2004
A Brief History in Time
In May 2003, a small group of intrepid freedivers headed for a newly opened quarry in Gloucestershire, seduced by the promise of depth. Not to be outdone and lured by talk of a challenge, a select team of mandatory support divers jostled for a ringside seat in innerspace.
Later the same month, at the biggest freediving championships ever to be held, the aficionados competed in Cyprus for the number one spot. At the award ceremony, once the dust had settled, the deepest constant weight freediver in the world paid homage to his safety diver Jeannette Copeland, who had performed a 95m support dive on an Inspiration Rebreather. He called her 'His Guardian Angel'. It had taken Martin Stepanek 3 minutes 34 seconds to complete his record breaking freedive to 93m. By contrast, his Angel’s dive totaled 62 minutes. This included a 4 minute travel time to the target depth, 8 minutes deep in the blue at 95m followed by 50 minutes to fulfill decompression obligations.
Jeannette's supreme skill was revealed only later when it emerged that during the dive, both her primary and back up computers had died, leaving her to calculate her deco requirements on the wing using contingency tables. Her cool-headed approach demonstrated to perfection the exemplary skills and self-sufficiency required in a safety diver.
Back in the land of hope and glory, the unique collaboration between freedivers and technical divers continued. The monthly pilgrimage to the National Diving Centre (NDC) was beginning to attract attention. By now the freedivers had adopted Martin Stepanek's tribute term and were calling their support divers Angels of the Deep.
In June 2003, I received an invitation to head up the scuba safety for the now established monthly freediving sessions. Sam Kirby (who had initiated the idea of using the NDC) had a vision involving freediving with a dedicated scuba support team. The request was duly accepted and the initial task of researching and writing appropriate safety protocol began. Although this was specific to the environment we were diving in, ideas were cherry picked from every support diver who was willing to share their views. Of particular value were the contributions from Marcus Lambert, Kirk Krack (Performance Freediving), Rudi Castineyra (FREE) and Paul Streeter. The British freedivers were consulted to include their perspective as were the crew who manage the NDC. Every text that could be read on freediver safety and support diving was researched; every clip of film and video footage available was watched. A trip to Nice to see how the CIPA guys operated proved interesting. In the finish, a great deal of general obsessing took place until a comprehensive understanding of freediver safety had been acquired.
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