Lighthouse Reef, Belize

125 m deep, 300 m wide and purley made of coral... I am searching for tickets right now. Who wants to come?

CWT to -40 m - I loved it!

Today at training I did a wonderful -40 m CWT dive. The thing that makes me feel so good about it is the fact that this was really easy!

I had a very good feeling when I first dipped into the water. My first preparation dive, I wanted to do to -20 m. It all went so smoothly that I had to stop myself at about -27 m.

Today I really felt like I am actually gaining onto my big goal this year - to hit -50m.

Unfortunatelly I did not get to do another dive. But next weekend I'll be back and then the light is going to hang a little deeper...

Locatrion: The pich black lake of Wildschütz. It is an old pit with a maximum depth of 74 m.

Buddy: Clemens, Jonas and Wolle

Safety: Wolle

Missing a turtle

We are missing our beloved turtle (green). She was last seen on 28th of June at the pool of the Horizont Appartment Resort in Pula. She ran away while we where busy training for the WC.

If you find her, please bring her back to us.

Videos online

I am putting a number of videos on YouTube. Most of them are taken in Pula, Croatia, where I spend a wonderful week with Elisabeth diving at night, on wrecks and inside caves and tunnels.

Most of the more intersting ones I could not upload so far as they are more then 100 MB big. It bugs me, though, as I know quite a number of videos on YouTube that are much longer. I have to find a solution here... So stay tuned...

Elisabeth doing a 50m DYN

And one more with 25m.

My first competition...

... was the 7th Berlin Master Cup in February 2005 and it was a total disaster.

I was very inexperienced in freediving competitions and had only been safety at two events the previous year. I was quite happy about my training results (STA: 4:02, DYN: 82m) at the time and wanted to show that... It all went wrong.

For static I did not have a coach (mistake #1) and could not understand my count down due to the echo from the loudspeaker. When I entered the competition zone, the safety diver started asking my all kinds of questions that I did not understand by the time. I looked at the judge and asked him how much time I had left. He shrugged and said "two minutes". I was shocked and immediately started to hyper ventilate (mistake #2). Everything then went well until 3'45 when someone turned my lights off. When they were going on again I lay on my back with a O2 mask on my mouth and was looking into quite a number of anxious faces.

Then, between my static and dynamic, I spend 5h getting really, really tired (OT STA: 18:24 - OT DYN 23:05) so I started drinking coffee (mistake #3). When my official top came, I was not really looking forward to the dive any more. I just wanted it to be over. And so I quit after 52m. When the judge gave me the yellow card and told me I was going to get penalty points for not making the 75m I had announced, I was really pissed! I hated competing and I hated AIDA!

It took a long time for me to go back and start again.

I still did not end up on the last place... ;)

I am a judge now

After a very intense course with „The President“, Bill Strombörg, I am now an AIDA international level E judge.

I am looking forward to use these skills in the future and travel to all those exotic places on the expense of the athletes… ;) I'll give some cards in return...