Team Sharkbait

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Last week I came back from a 9 day-holiday in Santa Lucia, Cuba. The location on Cuba was located at the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere about a 3 hour drive west from Holguin. Although the weather throughout the holiday could have been less rainy, on the day and times we planned some activities the weather was on our side.

One of the most breath taking moments we had in the holiday was the opportunity to go scuba diving with bull-sharks. As we were down 25 meters below the surface at a location called La Boca, it was a marvel to look at the bull sharks being hand fed by the diving master. Of course it’s even better to have seen them in their natural environment, without the help of a human touch… But I think wikipedia also describes the bull sharks as dangerous to humans, so for me this was more than a good chance to see them really close. When I write really close I’m talking about within arm’s reach, but I think ‘don’t touch’ had the upper hand in my mind .

The day after we had the shark feeding we tagged along to go to La Boca again but now for some freediving, as there also was a wreck on the bottom. The fore was situated approximately 8 meters below, going all the way down to 25 meters for the aft of the ship. As known with wrecks they are invested with fish, having made their habitat of this ship once roaming the seas. The location also featured a tricky timing when you want to freedive without the currents of the changing tides, we had a window of about an hour. It was a very nice spot to go freediving, a lot to see and a perfect training ground to do some different depth’s.

It was a very good training & learning holiday for my girlfriend Marieke, who’s enjoying freediving more and more since our trip to Dahab and Dominican Republic. During this holiday she asked me if she could do some statics to improve her breath hold time and confidence. So this was her first ever static and within 2 or 3 tries she managed to go up to a time of 2m39s. Most impressive and makes me proud! As for depth training, during our trips to Dahab she had been down to the entrance of the fish bowl at the Canyon at 17 meters deep, but at the time she wasn’t confident enough to do more. Now she knows that she could at least hold her breath longer than a minute, her confidence gained. As we were diving the wreck at La Boca she kind of had her mind set on reaching somewhat greater depths, I agreed to swim down to 20 meters with her following me. When I see with how much ease she does these depth’s, I thought to myself there is more than ‘just’ 20 meters.

So later that day when we tagged along another scuba diving boat, we got to go freediving at the same place the scuba divers went down to ‘the stairs’ location. A beautiful coral featuring a stretched coral in the shape of stairs starting from a big plateau at 8 meters, the first drop took you down to 20 meters for the 2nd plateau. The 2nd drop went down into the abyss, which made it an amazing location to freedive.

Marieke now had her new 20 meter personal best and she was easily doing dives to the 2nd plateau, she watched me do a 27 meter dive and was inspired to try a deeper dive as well. So now I took the safety skills acquired in my freediving courses and applied them to her freedive into the deep. I waited at the surface to the point she was 16-18 seconds down and followed her down. At around 15-18 meters I watched her turn and swam up with her to the surface again, where she did a perfect surface protocol and showing a very much easy freedive down to 25 meters in 1 m19s . All I can say is that I can really learn from Marieke, she showed me a really relaxed and at ease freedive, where-as for myself I tend to sprint down too much.

This was a perfect holiday filled with a lot of under water time, which we both very much love. Above the surface we had a great time at the resort as well, although for our opinion hotels can leave their animation crews at home, because enjoying the rest, sun, reading, sketching and peace of mind isn’t working when these guys are around .

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Greece is great! Beautiful country, nice people, good food. Too bad the underwater life is boring! I’ve been in the sea a few time, even did a boat trip, but nothing spectacular to mention. I even deleted the few underwater photos I made in the sea, because there was simple nothing to see besides water and a sandy bottom.

Don’t get me wrong! Visibility is great and if I had a line into the depth I probably would have had a great time together with some other freedivers. But as it turns out, I didn’t have that to my availability, so nothing fun to say about the sea.

I went to see Kos-divers to ask about some scuba diving. After the honest guy behind the counter asked my certification and I said I was a scuba instructor, he told me not to spend any money on scuba diving in Kos. Wow, that was honest and unexpected! He even told me that I could dive for free to see that there was nothing out there for me to see.

To clear things up: if you’ve never snorkeled or dived before, it will still be interesting! There are a lot of small fish swimming around, but if you are an intermediate or higher diver, don’t bother.

So, in the end my only real freediving I did was in the pool. I trained every day for a half hour and it was fun. Some breath hold crawls, some underwater laps and turns. All in all I’m very motivated to get back in the pool in the Netherlands and to Panheel where I can dive into the deep again next to a line!

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

This was the feeling I had when visiting some places in Norway. Last week I had a week off and me and my girlfriend went to visit Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Although this wasn’t a holiday filled with freediving, it definately brought me relaxation and insight on the mental level.

The travelling through countries like these is a good way for me to really clear my mind of thoughts and the daily grind. Sitting at a fjord lake and watching the mountains in the back getting lit by rays of sun beaming down through the clouds, gets my mind into drain mode. I start thinking about a lot of things and have no trouble dismissing the thoughts when I finnish thinking about them. In my experience this really has a positive effect on finding new inspiration and energy for the time ahead.

One of the most amazing places we’ve visited in the trip through Scandinavia, were the Preikestolen. The brochure told us it would be an intensive hike of about 2,5 to 3 hours, which in place would take us to an amazing view on the squared shaped plateau sticking out of a mountainside on a height of 600+ meters. Apart from the hike time, as we got at the top in 1 hour and 15 minutes, the brochure wasn’t lying. What an amazing view, which gave me a feeling as being on top of the world and you could almost reach out and touch the roof of clouds. But I think the picture best describes my perception of the feeling.

Although we were away only for a week – and even less than that as the weather had turned against us – we had a great holiday and my mind is totally relaxed and ready for some serious training. I’ll have to wait for Jorg to return from Kos and then I will gradually intensify my freediving training to a new level. One with more attention for relaxing at the right moments and pulling of a peak performance at the other. I learned a lot from the months of no competitions, which will guide me into creating a balance between the peaks and relax moments.

Sidenote
As you’ve noticed lately Jorg has really found his drive in freediving again, which is very good to see and read. I’ve been sharing the freediving passion for years with him, it’s stunning to see how much drive it gives you when you’re both excited about a sport. Especially when I’m on the down-low finding my fun in freediving again – since I started the competition break last year november – it really energizes, drives and inspires me to have a buddy totally committed to freediving again.

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Sandi Bitenc

First and foremost I’d like to say that Sandi Bitenc earns great respect from me and any freediver…actually. Last weekend he pulled off the amazing 24 hour marathon dynamic freediving for the Guinness book of World Records. Jorg and I set out to meet up with him for the event and we would do some reporting from the event. But what started as a somewhat small reporting schedule, soon grew into a (almost) 24 hour live stream of footage from the event.

Sanne & Jorg

How we did all this…
Jorg and I were at a small cafe near the pool (with some free wifi of course ) preparing for the event and it popped into our minds that we had the opportunity to use live-streaming from a mobile phone to do the coverage report. As these services have been growing lately, we agreed to just go for it and see where it would go. We started reporting with the idea of just streaming the every hour the first few hours, half-way through and at the end. But it was so much fun to do and the reactions coming in from the freediving community made that we went for the coverage of the whole event.

Left writing, middle video streams, right video editing, front live stream phone

We had a seperate office from the swimming pool for our headquarters to be setup. In this office Sandi had setup the streams of 4 camera’s from each end of the pool, the whole lane and a screen featuring his progress. He needed this to record all his actions for the Guinness committee, so they can verify his record and thus this will take some time for them to go through . In this office along side the pool we had the perfect overview of all things happening and so we agreed to go for full coverage. Every hour I picked up the mobile phone and Jorg walked with me for the comments on what the progress of Sandi’s attempt was at that time. In between the hours we streamed the view of his total progress from the screen. This left us with just enough time for Jorg to update the shark-freediving blog and for me to shoot photo and video material to edit, mount and upload to youtube in between the hourly reports. As we progressed into the night, at some point we took turns in the reporting alongside the pool, as one of us took a small sleep, the other could report the event. In all we both did not get more sleep than 1 hour and 20 minutes maybe…but that’s worth it!

Hardcore Sleeping

Final 6 hours
The last 6 hours of the event Jorg had to be the formal witness for the event and could not walk alongside the pool anymore, so I walked the camera around and commented where I could, returning to Jorg for his comments and to relay the messages from the freedivers watching the live stream. Seeing all the responses and Sandi receiving all the good luck wishes and congratulations was great to be a part of.

From a freediver point of view to get a real good impression what Sandi was doing, I joined him in the pool to do a few dynamic laps with him in the lane next to him. I mounted the GoPro camera on my head and started freediving with him…. It’s just an grueling schedule what he was doing. To be honest after six lanes I would have to say I was getting short on breath, of course I was using bi-fins and not all to streamlines, but this is really intense and deserves my greatest respect! What an athlete!

To keep awake we've got our own branded energy drinks!

Difficulties
Of course we had some difficulties as it was our first ever live reporting event. Sometimes the sound would drop from the live feed, or the feed would stutter…and of course this would happen on the most important moments So for the final hour we really put all our efforts in to show you what we were experiencing and for the viewers to see the final laps from the event!

Concluding
Apart from the small problems, we had a great time reporting and we do hope everybody who’d joined us liked the live-coverage as much as we enjoyed the event.

close-up of HTC TytnII phone record 1 of the 4 live streams

Jorg and I congratulate Sandi on the very impressive performance and would also like to thank him for having us over and taking good care of us, even though he was in there doing the dynamics he really thought this thing through, organized it into detail and thus making it an awesome event with an even more awesome result! 51,1 km’s > 1022 laps in a 50 meter pool… Hard to grasp, but a stunning world record!

To find all ins and outs about the event and our stories during the live event, check out http://www.shark-freediving

As Kostas joined up for training and freediving with us last year, I’ve asked him to write a small report on his journey to Greece last Christmas. Enjoy the story:

When I returned from Greece after my Christmas vacation I was completely blown away. The reason was that I went for the first time spear fishing during winter and it was an amazing experience. When I told Sanne about it, he asked me whether I could write a short story about it so he can upload it on the site. Well, it’s been four months since I was in Greece for Christmas and I am about to keep my promise…

The most incredible thing about the spear fishing trips was not the depth of the dives, nor was it the fish we saw or speared. It was in fact the realization that we were experiencing all this in the middle of the winter, the season I used to sit in a warm place and watch the sea from a distance.

Having been used to visit the sea during the summer holidays, I was thinking of winter as the time of the year when weather conditions, the temperature of the water, were making water activities, especially spear fishing, a thing for a few life defying people. How wrong I was…

The plan of going for spear fishing during our holidays in Greece was already fixed in our heads months before, but we were still not quite sure about the sanity of it. As we left Thessaloniki on our way to Chalkidiki the sky was changing between clear and cloudy and Karin and me where wondering what we would confront once we arrive. We were already tipped about three spots we should visit. The first location was windy and high waves were hitting the shore. Not ideal. We moved to the second but conditions were still not good.

After being two hours in the car, having rejected two out of three locations and being almost convinced that this will not happen today we arrived at the third one. We drove off the main road and down a narrow curvy one surrounded by dense green vegetation that would take us to the small port. Curve after curve as we were getting closer to water the excitement, as to what conditions we would find, was rising. Taking the last curve the landscape revealed itself: a bay surrounded by green hills, and in it, secluded, a small port with a small beach located at its left and a rocky formation on the right. To the south-east the horizon was clear and the sun was shining above us. The water was as calm as I have seen it during any nice summer day. The sight was thrilling.

Acceleration… we couldn’t wait to get into the water. Gear out of the car as fast as we can, putting it on in no time and into the water. Here we were, floating in cold water. Visibility was 15-20 meters and coping with the cold was no issue with the 5mm wet suit. We stayed in the water for almost two hours, saw plenty of activity, and even took an octopus home weighing almost 2 ½ kg. One of the greatest things during our stay in the water was the complete silence. No motorboats around, no boats at all as a matter of fact, something that is just unimaginable to experience during summer in Greece, especially if you don’t own your own boat to take you to remote locations.

The first experience was so positive that a second trip was planned after five days already. This time Karin stayed back and a friend of mine, Kostas (very popular name in Greece), joined me. He was already wound up to the extreme from the story of the first dive. This time however the weather was worse and I was less optimistic about it. The sky was cloudy, it was raining slightly and the forecast was talking about winds of 4-5 Beaufort strength. We drove off, telling ourselves that in the worst case scenario of forbidding conditions we will have a coffee and drive back and consider this as a nice short road trip.

Our destination was the same location and it seems that it is a good one as conditions where unbelievably good. The water was even calmer than the previous time, almost mirror smooth, and the visibility unchanged. It was raining during the whole dive and some waves picked up as we were leaving. This time my friend took an octopus out for dinner (the octopus was the dinner).

What an eye opener! All these years the thought of going into the sea during winter seemed to be so daring. How wrong I was. Given the right weather conditions, a protected location and good gear, freediving or spear fishing during winter is just as fun, if not more, as during summer. Having the chance to experience this made me think of all the miss beliefs  I might have about many things in life and that the only way to overcome these is to get out there and try them out.

As yugyug joined up for training and freediving with us last year, I’ve asked him to write a small report on his journey to Australia. Enjoy the story:

Hi Sanne, here is a little bit of news about my trip back to Australia over the new years break. It was really fun and I felt like I really needed it, coming from winter in Eindhoven. In fact, I went to the doctor for a medical check when I was in Sydney and was told I had low vitamin D in my blood, from lack of sun! I was determined to go to the beach as much as possible, but actually I never got very tanned , because every time I went to the beach I went spearfishing, covered up in a wetsuit… The Australian sun kills far more people from cancer each year than sharks anyway, so I probably chose the healthier option.

The spearfishing turned out to be a lacking in big catches though. I had been hoping to catch my first australian kingfish, and I speared a big one, about a metre in length on Christmas day, but the fish was actually too big for my gear. It fought like hell for a minute, bent my spear out of shape, then tore off. Damm! Fun, but a shame I didn’t land it.  This was at Bondi beach, in Sydney. The photo of the spearfishermen with the kingfish is not me, but a guy I’ve been spearing with a few times in Australia, his name is Scubapete.

One of the nicest things about Sydney is that you can go spearing easily almost anywhere. Bondi and many other beaches are 10 or 20 minutes from the centre of the city, and you can even jump in and spear inside the harbour if you want. Mostly the conditions were a too rough for deep diving, so I was diving less than 15m,  which is actually fine for most fish in Australia. Only once was the sea calm enough for me to feel relaxed enough to dive more than 20 metres, but I didn’t have a buddy so couldn’t really push it.

Later I went for a trip down south to the country town of Pambula, where I caught a fair bit of bream and whiting, including a rare blue morwong, which are very delicious, one of my favourite fish. Unfortunately I lost my camera a few weeks before, so don’t have many photos. My friend Oli took this one photo of my girlfriend and I in our wet-suits, just before we dived down the Pambula river, looking for flathead. It was pretty fun, we used the currents to take us down, and also take us back when the tide changed. There were lots of big sting rays around. I used FRC diving so I could drop below the surface silently by simply exhaling. Sinking down like this would not disturb the fish and was easy enough because were not spending energy swimming.

Oli and I made it all the way up the river to the lake mouth and relaxed until the tide changed, lounging around eating wild oysters off the rocks. But my girlfriend had gotten cold and got out halfway down the river to warm up in the sun. But the sun was hidden behind clouds and she couldn’t warm up. There was no way to walk back to the car as we were really far out in the bush. Freezing, she eventually managed to wave down a passing boat and they dropped her back at the river mouth. But then she discovered that her car keys, which she had tied to her wetsuit zipper, had fallen off in the river! So while Oli and I were cruising back down with the current, having fun eating oysters and shooting bream and whiting, my girlfriend spent the next 2 hours using an old piece of wire to open the door of her car. She was a bit annoyed when we eventually came back! But you can’t stay mad long when you have a summer night, a crate of beer and a bucket load of fish to enjoy

cheers! yugyug

Today we agreed to meet up at 9:30 to do the relay freedive where 2 teams head up against each other in a speed relay session. the dives should have all the 3 styles; free immersion, constant weight with fins and without fins to a depth of 20, 30 and 40 meter. The team can decide which style to go with which depth.

I teamed up with David and Muir and we were up against a danish team, Muir got his first 20m without fins properly and David did his 30 meters with fins and with hang-over, after which I headed down for the free immersion to 40 meters. But at 33 meters the equalization proved to be a bit harder, which must have been the stress of time related competition. So I returned to the surface without a tag and we were disqualified . Actually we didn’t really stand a chance against the first danish team. They got all depth within 2 minute and 30 seconds. Good fun to participate in!

For the second part of the day we set out to the canyon, which is a dive area nearby the Blue hole. David, Marieke and I went in the water with a buoy and got out to the point where the entrance to the fish bowl was. Prepared the buoy for easier descent. The entrance of the fish bowl is at about 16,5 meters, which we descent to with a free immersion style to save energy. First David showed me where the entrance was and after that we took a few minutes of rest and prepared for a dive through the first part of the canyon.

We dove down and got into the fish bowl, which was a kind of underwater underground cave in the shape of a bowl, at the end of the bowl the path bended down to about 23 meters to end up underneath a massive crack through which we ascended to the surface again. Breath-taking to do this and really got imprinted in my mind. We mad e a second dive down there and I filmed David going through this cave…awesome pictures and never to forget, this is what freediving is about!

At around 16:00 we headed out to sharm el sheikh to have the rest of the holiday in the Reef Oasis Beach Resort.

After our arrival at the airport we got through customs and there was a cab-driver waiting to pick us up. He brought us to Dahab in quite a good tempo, we were a bit confused by the way they communicate on the road here, but after a while the flashing and claxon fade into the background.

As we’d just checked into the hotel (Nesima), Rahel called me to meet up with the rest of the group. So there we ate a quick meal and met up with all the other freedivers around.

We managed to tag along with the excursion next day to Ras Mohamed. With a few check-ups and a bag searches, we were on a boat to the dive area. A nice quiet place surrounded by mountains and a few other boats.The first stop was a good warm-up area with a few corals and a lot of trigger fish.

After a nicely cooked meal on the boat we were on our way to the 2nd and last site for that day. This site featured a nice long coral wall and one beautiful cave to freedive through. I think that was quite an amazing part of the day.

Time to head back to Shar el Sheikh and from that point we travelled back to Dahab. When we were back there was a small briefing about tomorrows schedule. We’re asked to meet up at the pool of Nesima to do the magic 3 and team relay static. After that I’m going to finally meet the Blue hole and hopefully with a nice line to dive by.

Counting down the days has stopped, packing the freedive gear is done. I think it’s time to travel to Egypt now… As you might have read in my previous posts I’ll be taking part in the Freediving Competition: Bizzy Blue Hole (Dahab, Egypt). A depth competition featuring 3 of my favorite disciplines when it comes to depth; Constant Weight , Constant Weight Without Fins and Free Immersion. In the preceding weeks I’ve been preparing for this competition and also finally made my very own lanyard.

The global plan for me for this event are as follows:

12th of April
Departure @ Schiphol Amsterdam & Arrival @ Sharm el Sheikh & transfer to Dahab

13th of April
Training day in preparation of the competition.

14th of April
Training day in preparation of the competition.
There are also events planned on this day:

• Magic 3 – Hold your breath – stop at what you think is 3 min.
• Team static breath hold – Relay teams of three against other teams.

15th,16th and 18th of April
Aida Freedive competitions – disciplines: FIM/CWT/CNF. Furthermore on the 18th they might plan another Unassisted series of attempts.

17th of April
Resting day or training day

19th of April
This will be our last day at the Blue Hole , depending on the sistuation I might participate with the relay freedive that has been organised.

19th – 26th of April
Shark-Bait Xplores Sharm El Sheikh

27th of April
Arrival in Amsterdam

I hope to have some kind of an internet connection so I can write a few updates on how things are going. If not, you’ll just have to wait for me to get home, or Jorg might write a few lines here to keep you posted.

Preparation for the Bizzy Bluehole competition (http://www.freediving.biz/Bizzybluehole/) in Dahab is reaching it’s final steps, although I’m still waiting on a confirmation on certain points.

My Suunto D3 is in the diveshop to get it’s battery replaced and maybe they can fix the cracked button as well. Although the button works, it would be better if it’s working good and I do not have to press multiple buttons to get the same result, hehe . So I hope I’ll be able to actually record my depths in Egypt and post them back later on this Blog.

Creating a Lanyard is also on my ToDo-list and I’ve gathered some information on the topic and it seems the rules are strict yet unclear due to interpretation differences. But I’ll just create a lanyard and post it up here for some criticism and alter it by the feedback I receive.

Of course my training schedule will get it’s focus on the depth-related exercises like equalization, breathe-ups, surface/recovery breathe-technique, dry-walks, (dry)statics, etc. So stay tuned for some more blogging on this topic.