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

Testing another Counter Ballast System

When I was in Lysekil I participating in the first real life test of a counter ballast system (CBS) and it became clear to me that we will need more of these tests in order to gather more information and gain a better understanding of how these things work.

As I have been building a CBS on my own for the competition in Wildschütz I was even more curious (and a little nervous) about the outcome of this test. The set up is quite like in Lysekil. We drop the bottom plate to -40m. Wolle is going down with a lanyard around his waist. He is wearing no fins.

50 seconds after he dived in I feel a pull on the rope, the signal for the release of the CBS. As the counter ballast is being dropped on the other side of the platform I am watching the rope fall into the green water and wait for the first pull up. The weight on the bottom plate is 15 kg the counter ballast is 30 kg. Two men are pulling the rope on the platform to increase speed.

I am diving in to observe the scene while the safety divers are going for Wolle. When I see him he looks very calm and relaxed just like Stig did on the first test hanging on the rope. Only at the second glance I see that he is actually holding on to the lanyard with one hand.

Later Wolle told me that the waist belt holding the lanyard was too thin. He feared that it would break and that is why he grabbed the lanyards end. So it is necessary not only to check the lanyard but also the way it is attached to the body. That was the problem in Lysekil as well.

1’04 after we released the CBS Wolles head pops out of the water. Total dive time 1’54. That means we took 64 seconds to pull up a diver from 40 meters of depth. Is that too slow? I was hoping to end up at 1 m/s but that was not possible here.

On the first day when I tested the CBS with no diver attached I had the impression everything was running much smoother. Now, after the rope was in the water over night it must have been swelling and that caused friction on the rear pulley.

The next day we put some extra weight on the counter ballast. Whether that would help to speed up the process of retrieval I do not know. As Sebastian said, more speed can also create more problems. 40 m is a relatively shallow depth in regards to what the athletes where diving that day. Greater depth means longer dives, means longer before you know something went wrong, means longer before you act and longer before you have the person out of the water.

Maybe the answer is to release the CBS after 60 % of the estimated dive time and bring it up until the diver surfaced. Maybe this is all just overrated and I am thinking too much about the unlikeliest of events.

Ideas, comments, thoughts? Please share them with me.

Friendly Jelly

When I was in Lysekil at the Nordic Deep I had some nasty encounters with that wobbling mass that is called a fish… jellyfish. (The English language is so poor that they have to call everything that lives in the sea a fish… tsiss…)

I was not very happy about that meeting and it left a somewhat negative impression on me. I was quite happy to know that my next competition in Wildschütz would be in fresh water. I was just getting ready to be judge in the water when this guy came along.



I first did not trust my eyes but it was really there. Craspedacusta sowerbyi obviously is some kind of Asian invader. They are tiny (10-15mm) and they have no stinging tentacles and they are cute! I started playing with them and we became real good friends. The nasty episode from sweeden now has a counterpart and my understanding of nature is in balance once again. Thank you, Craspedacusta sowerbyi.

Wildschütz CWT/CNF/FIM double dip, Sept. 8th-9th 2007

Yes, now it is official, I will organize a deep diving competition this year.

God knows what drove me to start the idea but now it is actually running and a lot of people are helping me.

I have posted a thread on Deeper Blue for more information and I will talk about the difficulties, an organizer faces, here.