Sink Faze: The Ass-Bottomed Boat
Posted By Paul Kotik on 29 March 2006
In Association with PFI
West Bay, Grand Cayman Island, BWI - For those of us who arrived on-island yesterday and stayed up late last night getting settled, today’s variation on the training theme was welcome. Rather than rising with the morning sun and hustling to have our growing entourage assembled on the WestBay dock by 8 AM, we were blessed with an afternoon ocean session.
Mandy Rae had a rest day imposed upon her by Mr. Krack and cooled her heels in the Coconut Bay base camp – hardly a day off, though, as she was well-sunk into Performance Freediving administrative work on her laptop as the crew convoy pulled away.
The winds had picked up overnight, and it remains unseasonably cool. Cold, by Caymanian standards – yesterday topped out at about 80F. Today seems about the same, but it feels colder due to the winds. It’s doing some serious blowing in this corner of the Caribbean. In fact, when I came to this morning on my padded patch of kitchen floor, it was roaring so hard I thought for a moment I was back in Aruba in 1998, and had dreamed all that seemed to have happened since then.
If only.
Several flukes of geography and geology make Grand Cayman a near-perfect venue for diving. The position, shape and topography of the island provide for deep diving in reasonably calm waters no matter which way the wind blows.
The HD Odyssey wizards, Tad Masek and Connor Kirsch, had planned a deployment and test of their 3-camera underwater live High Definition video system for this day, alongside and in conjunction with Doc’s and Martin’s training dives.
The Odyssey rig now includes what everyone agrees is a rather comical element: Connor, as surface controller, has solved a complex set of engineering and logistical problems by stationing himself, a Honda generator and his computerized control array in a very, very small plastic dinghy which is tethered to the freedivers’ surface rig some distance away. Did I say plastic ? It’s clear plastic. Transparent. And very small.
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