New personal best

Yesterday I've set my new personal records in breath-hold diving. It's now 100 meters in Dynamic With Fins (DYN) and 3:40 in static breath hold (STA). So my personal record table is now

• DYN - 100 m (pool)
• Dynamic No Fins (DNF) - 50 m (pool)
• Static (STA) - 3:40 (pool)
• Constant Weight (CWT) - 18 m (open water)

Corsica trip

Some pictures from the trip to Corsica.

B-17 Flying Fortress wreck near Calvi

Freediving near Calvi

Calvi citadel

Groupers on Merouville divesite, Lavezzi Islands near Bonifacio

We toured the western coast of the island doing some dives including the B-17 wreck near Calvi. This was one of the places I always wanted to dive, even before I started diving:) Generaly good food, nice weather and clear water:)

75m Dynamic With Fins - New record

Today I finally (planned this long ago) managed to set a new personal record in breathhold swimming with fins:D It's now 75 meters on one breath. Of course big fins helped a bit:)

It's still way back behind world record (Alexey Molchanov's 250m at the time of writing) and it took me longer, but I'm happy and hope I'll be able to improve this soon.

Search & Recovery

As I was swimming today at our local swimming pool a lifeguard approached me and asked if I could help one of the other swimmers. It turned out that he lost one of his custom made contact lenseses in the pool. I thought 'no way I can find this lens' as there were lots of people swimming, but I didn't want to dissappoint the lifeguard so I agreed. I did a quick breathhold warm up and swam towards the area of the pool where the lens was lost. Remembering my search & recovery skills acquired during the AOWD and Rescue courses I applied the U-pattern. This was easier in the pool as I could follow the tiles on the bottom. On the other hand it was harder because I had to surface to get a breath. I wasn't expecting to find the lens, so I was surprised and happy when it appeared right before my eyes on the second or third turn :)

The guy who lost the lens was even happier - he said that if I hadn't found it he would have to wait one month before he could get a replacement...

Back to diving business

I've had quite a long sick leave (some damn infection), but now I'm back:) As I wrote some time ago, we've also had a month break due to the fact that our instructor was away in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt teaching technical diving. He was also planning a dive to 180 meters, which unfortunately he did not do because of some formal problems.

But now we've resumed our divemaster training: we're attending lectures, doing homeworks and practicing basic SCUBA skills demonstration at the pool. It turns out that demonstrating a skill is something quite different from just using that skill. At some point in your diving career you stop thinking about all the things you have to do to get water out of your mask, and now you must show this skill step by step, emphasizing the most important phases... it's very easy to mix things up. I hope the good old practice makes perfect still applies...

One more bad thing about being ill is that I've had a break in breath hold training and so I'm forced to put my plan to do 75 meters DYN back:(

New personal DNF record

Today I've set my new record in Dynamic Without Fins (DNF). It's now 50 meters on one breath:) This was a part of my plan for February, now I must do 75 with fins...

Book: The Dive. A Story of Love and Obsession.

The Dive is Pipin Ferreras' autobiography. As in most biographies it describes his life:) This turns out to be a very interesting life as Pipin (that's his nickname, real name is ) is a freediving champion in no limits category, who set many world records. Pipin started freediving when he was a child. Actually he started spearfishing, which then became a way to earn his living when he was older. His record setting started as a way of attracting attention to Cuba in order to boost it's tourism and economy which was in serious trouble after the fall of USSR.

The book is not only a biography but also a tribute to his fourth wife, Audrey Mestre, who died while trying to set a world record in no limits freediving.

This is a sad book. Come to think about, it's a second book that is about an extreme diver who died during diving that I've read recently. The other one is The Last Dive by Bernie Chowdhury.

It's a good book and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in freediving. The film Ocean Men directed by Bob Talbot, starring Pipin, Audrey and another freediver, Umberto Pelizzari, is an excelent complement to this book.

James Cameron is planning to film this book, however I haven't found information on when it's going to happen.

56m Dynamic With Fins - New Life Record

Today I've set my life record in Dynamic With Fins (DYN). This is a discipline of freediving in which you swim the longest distance you can on a single breath. It is one of disciplines recognized by AIDA - the international freediving association. There are also other disciplines, you can read about them on AIDAs site. Some of them don't appeal to me, the ones I consider fun are: DYN, DNF, CNF, CWT:

DYN

Dynamic With Fins - swimming the longest distance you can underwater on a single breath

DNF

Dynamic Without Fins - like DYN but no propulsion aids are allowed

CWT

Constant Weight - descent and ascent with fins only

CNF

Constant Weight Without Fins - descent and ascent without any aids

The world records (men) in these discipnes, sanctioned by AIDA, and my own pathetic records are (this is true as of 22.01.2008):

Discipline	World Record	My record
CWT	83m	5m(max pool depth)
CNF	112m	5m(max pool depth)
DYN	244m	56m
DNF	1865m	25m

Of course I also keep track of what's going on in the other ones, you can check current AIDA records here.


A picture of me going for the surface, taken last summer in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt
We train at our local pool and at Warsaw's deepest pool in The Palace of Culture (PKiN). Trainings in PKiN are supervised by instructors from our dive center, Nautica Warszawa, whereas at our local pool we have to rely on the lifeguards who also watch other swimmers. They tend to get very anxious each time we put on our fins and masks, they even require us to inform them if we plan to swim more than 25m (I already wrote why). This is a bit of a nuisance , but safety's first:).
As for the record - I plan to reach 75m in February.

Swimming headaches:(

Recently I've been having headaches after swimming freestyle for longer distances or swimming underwater. I supposed this might be related to CO₂ buildup and today I've read an article on freediver training methods describing this. It also turned out (after a few visits to the local swimming pool) that the headaches started receding. That's probably due to my body recovering its CO₂ tolerance after the Christmas and New Year break laziness period:)

My precious Gara 3000 (2)

Yesterday I tried these fins and they are amazing - 6 dolphin kicks is enough for a 25m pool!!!

One funny thing - the lifeguards were very upset when they saw me with the fins. They told me to let them know before doing more than one pool length uderwater. It turned out later that one of them was involved in a freediver drowning accident at Warszawianka aqua park.

My precious Gara 3000

A photo of Seemann Sub XDrive, Mares Tropic, Mares Avanti X3 (in that order) compared to Cressi Sub Gara 3000 fins. The Garas are, ofcourse, the longest ones:)

Diving Xmas gifts

Whole year of talking about diving took effect - no stupid 'what shall I do with this crap' Christmas presents:) We (me and Magda) got lots of books on diving, including 'Last dive' by Bernie Chowdhury, 'Wreck Diving' and some others. I got a Suunto SK-7 diving compass and Magda got a Suunto Vyper diving computer. I also got new fins, not just fins but brand new Cressi Sub's Gara 3000 - they especially made for freediving and are twice as long as normal fins. Can't wait to try them at the swimming pool (it was closed for Christmas)...