No Wetsuit FRC's

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

It was a beautiful day today, so Sanne and I decided to do some lake freediving. As the rest of the Netherlands was in heavy thunderstorms and rain our diving lake was in full sunshine. However, the waves on the water were even bigger then last time.

After we changed into our gear we stepped into the water and I immediately noticed that the water temperature at the surface is way up again. But the visibility in the top was down a lot!

As always we started with a first dive to 10 meters to test equipment, body and mind and as normal everything felt great. I did a static at the bottom of around 45 seconds making it to a total time of 1:35 minutes. Sanne also did well with his first dive reaching 1:40 minutes.

After the slow long swim to the 23 meter line I still felt great and decided I would make the first dive. It was excellent conditions with warm top water and a good thermocline at around 5 meters. Big diving reflex today so I felt pretty confident about my dives that had to come.

First dive free immersion style down and I counted to 15 before coming up again from 23 meters. This felt sooo easy. As if it was the new 10 meter warmingup dive. Second dive I decided to count to 20 seconds when I was at 23 and it still felt good. For sure time for our own diving buouy so that we can set the line somewhat deeper.

Third dive was again competition time. Sanne  did a countdown and I did a constant weight dive. I managed to come up after 51 seconds and I had no lactic acid in my legs. That was probably due to the fact I used a very small but high frequency kick to come up again. I’ll do some more experiments with  this later on.

Alternating between my dives, Sanne was doing his as well. Sanne set down some impressive dive times and made it look very easy as well. He can do  double this depth for sure! Again: we need the new buoy! ;)

Then it was time for the FRC and empty lung dives. I managed to do a good 18 meter FRC dive, that I had to really work for in the last few meters. I was pretty tired when I came up but in the end it felt fantastic. The empty lung dive brought me to 10 meters depth and also felt okay. Strange thing is that as long as I keep below 5 meters I have no urge to breath with empty lungs, but when I get above that I’m almost always out of air within 20 seconds. The empty lung dive to 10 meters lastet 40 seconds.

Sanne did a good FRC dive to 16 meters and he finally has solved his equalization problem. The empty lung dive brought him to 7 meters and he had to stop because of the equalizing and not  because of the low o2.

After these exhausting dives we decided to swim back to the 10 meter platform and swim back to shore underwater from the platform on. I followed Sanne, or should I say dust cloud. It amazes me how fast Sanne swims underwater with his bifins. I almost had to sprint to keep up with him!

At the shore the water still felt so great we decided it was time to do some diving without wetsuit. In our swimming-trunks and with our mask and snorkel we swam back to the 10 meter buoy. Sanne prepared to go into the thermocline to 10 meters but got stuck because he couldn’t equalize because of the cold. I also tried to do it in constant without fins style, but the cold made it really hard for my diaphragm but I managed to touch the 10 meter platform anyway.

After these first no wetsuit dives the game was on and we did all kind of crazy dives to 10 meters. Head first, head up, free immersion, constant without fins. Free Immersion upside down coming up was my favorite of today.

All in all a great outdoor session! Depth is going great. Equalization power is getting stronger and stronger and the fun factor is very high! I want more! ;)