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Saturday 5th June 2004
Today proved to be as exciting as yesterday was. Late last night the team decided that David will be going for 63m in the Unassisted Constant Weight discipline. If David could hit that depth he would be beating the previous record set by Topi set in Novemeber 2003.
The whole team was relaxed as they arrived at the boat at 10am. The safety divers (a unique blend of 2 Russian and 1 Italian) had been at the boat since 06.30 setting up. Once all were aboard we set off for the mooring a short way off shore. The location where the dives are being held is perfect for FreeDiving – the bottom is 110m only a short way from shore – it reminds me of the sort of facilities open to the FreeDiving school based out of Nice, France and shows why F.R.E.E. run courses from Kas on a semi-regular basis.
Whilst David is warming up on the front of the boat and preparing himself for the deepest unassisted dive of his career, the rest of the team are in a flurry of activity at the back of the boat. A dive platform is used to allow the diver to sit in the water before starting the dive. Positioning this along with the setting the line and getting all safety divers into position takes a good 45 minutes. The safety divers are often the unsung heros of these types of events as they work extremely hard for very little recognition.
Finally everything is set and David heads out to the dive platform.
He makes 2 warm up dives, one to 15m the other to 20m. Both are completed successfully and he starts his breathe up for his 63m attempt. Rudi counts down the 8 minutes to the official start and slowly the safety and media divers slip under the water taking up their positions one-by-one. Everything and everyone is in place as David slips below the water.
For a few moments everything is silent with only Yasemin (who was having a rest day and not diving), the captain and myself on the boat and Rudi and Luca (the surface judge) by the dive platform.
Rudi completes his breathe up and descends to join David around the 15m mark. Both break the surface and David starts his recovery breathes. After David is given the OK by the surface judge the celebrations begin! Rudi is seemingly more pleased than David and is jumping around screaming "Yea! That’s the way it is done!" and giving David such vigourous back-slaps that I think he might be trying to knock him out!
David, looking rather pleased, returns to the boat and the team start their work at pulling up the line and bringing the equipment back onto the boat. Speaking to David he explains he is relieved and very pleased at completing the deepest unassisted dive of his life. "I’ve trained 5 months for this!" he explains to me.
Once we return to shore everyone tucks into a lunch and Rudi debriefs the team. At the end of the briefing Rudi tells us that David is having a day off tomorrow and Yas is going for 46m which will best her previous attempt yesterday and re-set the World Record! Stay tuned!
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