Menorca Freediving Training Camp
Posted By Francois Gautier on 25 May 2009
The concept: to organise a training camp where people can train for deep freediving over a period of six weeks.
The primary objective of the camp was to offer high level freedivers the opportunity to train in depth disciplines in excellent conditions with the full infrastructure on hand to validate their performances.
The second goal was to enable athletes at a lower level to mix with the elite athletes to help them progress by giving them access to all the new techniques used by the really deep divers.
Technical set up and organisation
We were based at a dive centre, Sea Gypsy Divers. For the open water training, we had a 7.5m RIB set up with training and safety equipment that gave us two warm up lines and one official line. To validate records and make performances official, we had a deep camera, surface camera and two AIDA Level E judges present.
To keep things comfortable, the number of athletes was limited to a maximum of ten freedivers for each training session, each session lasted 2 hours. We left each day at 6.30am and returned at 9.15am. Each freediver stayed for around 10 days.
Menorca - Calla Galdana 9 July
I arrived in Menorca by ferry. Three Finns - Eero, Jussi and Jyri had already arrived, as had David, an English mate who was waiting for me. They had each come to add a few metres to their personal bests and to have a go at beating their respective national records. The Finns were going to do more than just collect depth records. They had linked up their attempts with a charitable project that was looking to subsidise medical research into leukaemia and multiple sclerosis (www.dive4aid.net).
I had only just arrived, I was tired but the temptation was too great. Before we even settled in to our apartment, we decided to take the boat out. Within ten minutes we were out in the open sea off Calla Gardana to see what it had to offer. The water was 27 degrees, with 35m viz and a blue that I had rarely seen before.
On the other hand, when it comes to wind and current, I was not expecting it to be the same as it is in Nice, in the bay of Villefranche. Here, 3 miles out in the wide open sea, to the south of the island, we were diving along a line where the bottom lay at 100m. We were exposed, and the wind and current was going to cause us problems. There was no way we could train anchored in our usual way. With the current running, the lines would soon be pulled out on quite an angle. On the other hand, to train without anchoring, by drifting with the current, was also not going to work because the wind, rarely going in the same direction as the current, would also drag the lines up from the vertical - making deep training quite hazardous.
Nano, a freediver and marine biologist, knew the area where we were going to dive all summer well. They have collected many specimens there and also used it as a site for marking sperm whales. Our site was right at the bottom of the canyon, with 120m below us. "We are right out in the open sea, in an area full of fish. Sometimes fishermen have caught white sharks here. But you are most likely to come across Mambiolas - a kind of manta ray."
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