The Mermaid Diaries - Volume One
Posted By Sam Kirby on 22 August 2005
In May of this year, SaltFree Divers announced the “Mermaid Challenge”. We decided that we had had enough of our pontoon being full of blokes, with the UK Women’s team roster being almost a foregone conclusion every year and with a general lack of female touch about the place. We also had a sneaky feeling that there were a lot of ladies out there with stacks of freedive talent that was, as yet, untapped.
And how right we were! A few magazine ads, web articles and posters later, the applications started coming in. All over the UK it seemed there were water babies who wanted to grow up, swimmers who wondered if they could do it even better under the surface, scuba instructors who were bored of carrying a tank around and quite a few who had fantasies of growing a tail and swimming off into the blue.
Somehow from these many applicants, we have to select one Mermaid. Whoever wins will receive free training from SaltFree up to AIDA *** Freediver and regular coaching up until the UK Team Trials next year. Deeper Blue has also kindly offered to provide our Mermaid with a tail (in fact two, both a monofin and set of bifins from Special Fins) and a weekend at the SETT Tank to complete the Deep Tank Freediver Course. Quite a prize if I say so myself!
After an initial sift through the application forms, as many as we could fit in were invited along to pool sessions in London and Bristol. London took place on a sleepy Sunday morning when anyone sane was recovering from a night out, holed up at home with the Sunday papers. Our intrepid mermaids had instead got up at 5 am to get the train down to the city, followed my complex instructions and located the “blue truck by a brown door in Baker St” to find the pool. Incredulous that they had a) all found it and b) mostly turned up early, I had high hopes from the start.
Six potential mermaids came along to the London session and Deepest Dave King came out of freedive hibernation to help me put them through their paces. We started with a rather un-brief briefing as I tried to tell them everything they needed to know about freediving in 30 minutes and then stretched and belly breathed until it was time to get into the pool. In buddy pairs, Dave and I then watched as the girls made several attempts at Static Apnea and all ended up looking like total pros by the end of it. The best part was seeing how well everyone worked together, encouraging and congratulating each other on good performances even though they were all essentially in competition with one another.
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