Once Upon A Dive
Posted By Eric Fattah on 2 January 2006
As I awoke on the morning of the 10th, I was overwhelmed with negative emotions. It was one of those days that I felt like staying home and resting. But, I had to get up and go to the depth competition. I was not happy with my psychology at this point. I was anxious and nervous. I was planning on wearing a 5/6mm wetsuit top, and a 3mm bottom, with 4.4lbs of weight. Contrast this to the 3mm full suit with 2.2lbs that I was used to. I had never even tried the hybrid suit combo, and the 4.4lbs of weight was nothing but a mathematical calculation. And, inscribing 57m, I had calculated that the dive would take as much effort and time as the 62m dive with the 3mm suit, which lasted 2:16. So, I was basically trying to tie my personal best during the competition, although the numbers didn't show that. So I was understandably nervous.
So, I got up at 8:35am, knowing that I was supposed to get in the water around 1pm. I packed my gear. Then I ate lots of raw almonds and sunflower seeds, and one avocado. I mixed 13g of sea salt with 50ml of water, and drank the horrible tasting concoction. Soon after I felt queasy in my stomach, bordering on nautious, and the feeling lasted about 30 minutes.
Soon I packed everything in the car and left. While in the car, I was obviously thirsty from the salt and I drank a lot of water. I played my diving-affirmations tape, and with each repetition, my mood and attitude improved, amazingly. Before long I felt happy and confident. As I neared the end of the 55-minute drive, I put in a different tape, with some inspirational music. This lifted my mood even more. By now I was totally confident.
I parked at Kelvin's grove and ate another avocado. That was a bit risky, I don't usually eat that close to diving. Before long I had hauled my gear down to the beach. Kirk was giving the safety divers their briefing. I started gearing up. My gear consisted of a dacor bandit mask, an impulse 2 snorkel (which I ditch before the dive), a rubber belt with two picasso hydrodynamic weights, 1 kilo each, picasso 5mm socks, picasso 3mm gloves, and the 5mm arms/6mm body picasso wetsuit top with the 3mm picasso pants. In case you're wondering, Picasso is one of our team's sponsors (!) I was, as usual, using my chinese bladed monofin.
We synchronized our watches at 1pm, and my 45 minute warm up officially started. I did a pack stretch lying on my back, then I lubed my monofin footpocket and got in the water. I swam out to the warm up line and started my five minutes of facial immersion. I checked my watch, and the surface temp was 58F, as expected. After my facial immersion I did three exhale dives to 21ft, each lasting 0:35. Then I did another pack stretch. Then I told the safety person I was going to make a warm up dive. This was a new addition to my prep routine. I went to 121ft, and was not very happy with the state of my lungs. I had a small contraction before I got to the surface, which shouldn't happen on so shallow a dive. Then, I started my warm up static breath-holds. I was going to do two, instead of the usual one, another modification to my prep. The first was 3'30 (1st contraction @ 2'30). Now there was 9 minutes and 16 seconds until my official countdown. I was planning on finishing the second static 2 minutes before my final countdown, so I started it with 6:00 remaining until my countdown. Half way into the static, the safety person wanted to put the official Apneist on my wrist. I let him, but it obviously bothered my breath-hold. It ended 3'30 (1st contraction at 2'50). Of course I don't push these breath-holds. Now there was 2:27 left until my final countdown. I took off my mask and breathed very slowly and shallow, afraid of overventilating. Then Peter told me there was one minute to my countdown. I swam seven meters to the official line. I put my mask on again, and started breathing, face down. Just as I started my breathing, Kirk called '2-minutes!'. I started my 'saturation' breathing, holding for about 3-5 seconds at the top of each breath, exhaling and inhaling slowly. Normally I am quite anxious during the 2-minute countdown. But, this time was different. The affirmation tape had worked wonders. I was so happy and confident, I literally broke into a giggle twice! During my breathing, I concentrated on the huiyin acupoint, which is the source of all relaxation. However, as Kirk called 30-seconds, I was a bit worried. I had miscalculated. I had finished the last static too late, and my body was still laced with CO2, even by my standards. As I took my last breath, I felt no satisfaction, no sense of being oxygenated...but I still was confident, after all, the depth was 5m less than my pb, but then again, I was wearing a thicker suit. As I finished my last breath, I found out that the 5/6mm top was more restricting. Instead of the usual 38 lung packs, I packed 43 times before being full. Then I started my dive, with Brett LeMaster trying to capture as much digital video before I vanished into the murky green water.
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