FIM here I come

I have just been looking at my list of personal bests (no, not because I am so much in love with myself but because I am worried) and I have decided that next time I go in the water I will crack that free immersion record.

-33 m was just a little try when I had nothing else to do. It is in no relation to the other targets I have hit and it has been lingering around here for moor than a year now...

It has to go away! Wish me luck...

- 30 m CNF in competition at the Nordic Deep

This was a nice dive! A very nice dive, indeed!

After my rather confused training dive in Wildschütz I wanted to know whether I can do the same in competition.

When we got to the platform I was calm and focused, when I went to the line I was picturing the dive. Five seconds after TOP I was going down. No problems coordinating swim strokes and equalization. below 15m I started sinking and before I knew it I was at the bottom plate fiddling around with the tag for a couple of seconds to get it on my arm and not loos it.

Then I made the strongest pull ever that was rocking the boat quite a bit. Anyway, that initial impulse made it so much easier to start the swimming. After my first stroke I really could see myself going up, a sensation I was missing last week when I had the feeling to still be falling.

When I saw the safety, I was already enjoying the gliding and soon felt the uplift of the positive buoyancy. I was choking a bit when I gave my OK to the judges but that was more due to the excitement then to the dive.

Right after the dive (as after every successful dive) I was sure I could have put some meters on. And that might even be true. But this is a good point to start. -30m is a nice depth to achieve and may be the first step in the right direction towards deeper dives to come. I am very happy about it.

It is wonderful to dive in a discipline where not equalization but your physical strength is stopping you. After most of my latest CWT dives I was rather frustrated because I came up fresh and strong having no problem to swim all the way down until the ears would not allow me going any deeper.

Let’s see how long it takes until I hit that frontier again.

Judges: Sebastian and Hanli
Safety: Jens
Coach: Elisabeth
Fotos: Matti Luukkonen

Dive station in Wildschütz

The dive school at my favorit trainig lake has made a long plan come true and sunk a station for decompression to -8m depth.



Now this is too tempting for a bunch of freedivers not to go and check it out.



And then, allways remember to breath out on the way up... ;)



They are sinking another, even bigger station this week. I can't wait to go and dive in...

- 30 m constant weight no fins

Long time no news from the diving Martin but I'm busy.

On Saturday, my sweet mermaid convinced me to try something really crazy. Diving without fins...

So far I have been successfully avoiding that discipline arguing that everything that moves under water has some sort of fin so why shouldn’t I? But I had left my mono fin on land and had done a 40m dive with the bi-fins so I thought... what the heck...

Dove down, got below the point where I'm sinking, enjoyed the ride until I thought "hey, you'll have to swim all the way back up again!". So I turned, started swimming and had the feeling of still falling. I continued to swim and it got better... slightly better. Then I remembered that I had not pulled on the line to give Elisabeth a signal that I'm coming. So I did that. It did not help my ascent but then the swimming got better. Slightly better. When I saw Elisabeth safetying me, I was quite happy. But there was still 20m to go up. I can tell you, that was the hardest 20m of swimming I have ever done and my arms never felt so dead.

But, when I got out of the water my Mosquito showed 30,7m! That is 5m deeper than a certain mermaid... ;)

Oh, and the German Lake Record in this discipline lies at -36m, a performance that I judged at the Apnoe Happening in Hemmoor this summer.

Safety: Elisabeth