27.5 meters under the sea -- on one breath of air.

The Big Blue is a wonderful film. I saw it years ago, before I'd ever been able to get below 15 feet (it's all about how you equalize your ears). In that film they do No Limits freediving, where you ride a weighted sled down and a balloon up. The current world record is 702 feet! Performance Freediving International does not do no limits, possibly because of the risks involved, or maybe because of the expense. Not only the gear, but sending safety divers on scuba that deep is very costly. A scuba diver who goes that deep as a safety would have 8 1/2 hours of decompression on the way up.

Only problem is that a trip that far would have to be planned in advance, long before the weather could be known.

Jessica Alba is hot! But that movie was about scuba diving in search of treasure, not freediving. (Does your GF know you watched that movie and didn't even care what it was about??? )

 

So I'd probably be deathly seasick only 2/3 of the trip, and 1/3 of the trip I'd be recovering? Actually, that's about my track record lately, though I usually try to go places where it's calm 2/3 of the time and rough only 1/3.

 

Erin told me she'll be working on getting the DVDs out next week, and will ask the higher-ups if it's okay for me to post my dive on YouTube. I don't see why they'd refuse, since I will give them credit, so I hope to have it up in a week or two.

 

You are fortunate! Very few people can equalize hands-free. If you were interested, training could still increase the depths you could reach, because there comes a point when special methods are needed to extract air from your lungs in order to equalize your ears; and there are exercises to increase your vital capacity as well as your tidal volume to residual volume ratio.

And, yes, I do intend to use this for more than just distance diving. In fact, the only interest I have in going deeper is as training for recreational diving: diving down to look at the pretty fishes and the corals. Also, swimming with dolphins is more fun the deeper you can dive and the longer you can stay down. You can stay on the surface and have great fun, but you get more one-on-one interaction with them if you can freedive.

My next trip will be to Hawai'i. I expect to do three things: Some open water work on the line with PFI to complete my intermediate certification (I only got the Basic certification because they were not satisfied with my rescue skills); some day excursions to swim with dolphins; and some recreational freediving on the reefs.

Later in the spring, there is a big competition in Cayman. The large numbers of freedivers will be a great opportunity to do recreational freediving on the reefs, as well as get coaching on technique, and maybe try for a new personal depth or time record, as well as hobnob with champion divers. This sport is so new and so underappreciated by the public at large, that you can meet and socialize with world champions. Where else but in freediving can you find a world champion teaching a beginning-level class? Can you imagine Itzhak Perlman giving violin lessons to people who've never held a violin before? Yet William Trubridge gives regular freediving lessons at all levels from beginner to advanced, and Erin Magee is a regular instructor at PFI.

BTW, I am still waiting for the DVD of the advanced class. They did tape my 90-foot dive. The DVD of the intermediate class only included three shots of me, none of them great: two warm-up pull-downs (we do some free immersion, pulling down and back up on the rope, as warm-ups) and my 20-meter dive, showing clearly my rather pathetic form.

 

They finally sent me the DVD of the advanced class, and it has (maybe because I especially requested it) my full 27.5-meter dive, showing moderately clearly that I did in fact touch the plate, though you'll have to take my word for it that the plate was at that depth. It also has my dive before that one, where I totally flubbed the entry and lost so much time and energy that I turned before reaching the plate. You don't actually see my turn on that dive, but it doesn't matter since I didn't reach the plate.

I have permission to post the clips, but the DVD is in a format I do not have software to edit. (All I've got is what comes with OS X.) It's snowing here now and the forecast is for several days of snow, but once it clears I'll take the DVD to an editing studio and have them excerpt the clips and I'll post them on YouTube.

Be forewarned that although I was about average in the intermediate class, I was the worst student in the advanced class, where everyone else had already been beyond 100 feet, had much more experience than I, and had much better form. I was in the advanced class only because it gave me more diving time than the intermediate class alone would have given me, but as far as my diving ability, I didn't belong there. I was blown out of the water (figuratively speaking, not literally) by my 90-foot dive, which is why I am so anxious to share it with everyone willing to watch it.