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Day 3: June 1st, 2004
Written by: Rudi Castineyra

Today was finally a good day, the auspicious start that we were all looking forward to, everything going really well. We met at the marina at 8:00 Am and departed soon after, all of our gear ready since yesterday. You know, waking up at 7:00 in the morning may not seem like much of a sacrifice to most people, but when you have a team with so many people that just a few days earlier were so many time zones away, it is hard to adjust to so little sleep, being that most of us finally manage to sleep by 3:00 or 4:00 Am at night. But, that said, we were really looking forward to this first day of diving and we were not disappointed, the seas were really flat and calm, the water blue and clear, boasting visibility in excess of 30 meters, and the cold didn’t even bother us much. The surface temperature is about 22 degrees centigrade/72 Fahrenheit and around 18 centigrade/64 Fahrenheit at 40 meters/130 feet, which I’m sure will have our friends from Canada and Finland laughing at us spoiled brats, but hey, don’t forget we’re diving with 1.5 mm wetsuits. Anyway, the water was nice and inviting and we could not wait for the boat to stop and the platform to be set to get in…

To save time Yas and David ran a “breathing chain” for their warm ups, one of them siting on the chair taking the final breaths and the other one preparing on the platform deck, the latter one moving onto the chair as soon as the former one had gotten in the water, with me safety diving and timing them as usual. This way, we were able to run through the two negative pressure warm up dives in about 25 minutes, which is just five minutes longer than what it usually takes them to follow the same routine individually. The dives felt good, both divers diving first to 15 meters and then to 18 meters, their dive times between 1:35min and 1:45 min, a bit short compare to their usual, but that’s to be expected from the first dives in a record period. We then got the rest of the team in the water and quickly proceeded to get the deep dives going. Yasemin dove first, doing an easy 30 meters, checking a new technique she has been practicing in the pool and “stretching” her new wetsuit, while David did a couple of 40 meters in his new Orca wetsuit, which he swears is the best for unassisted, though since the suit does not have an attached hood, he looked a bit silly with his swim cap…Anyway, their dive times were good, showing average speeds for Yas of 0.71 meters/second descent and 0.83 meters/second ascent, and 1.02 meters/second for both descent and ascent for David. Yas was a little slow and felt the descent a little tiring from the extra swimming that resulted from being a bit positive, so tomorrow we will add an extra 600 grams to her weight belt. And, though David’s speed was right on the mark of what I would ideally want him to do his 60+meter dives at, he attained it by firing up his engines a bit much rather than freefalling as comfortably as he should, so we will also add 600 grams to his weight and check. Since both divers really benefit from the rest of the free fall period, it is of utmost importance for us to make sure that they can do that and the right amount of weight is vital for that purpose, so this will be our goal for tomorrow’s dives. Thus, we will do another couple of shallow dives tomorrow, likely 35 meters and 45 meters respectively for Yas and David.

Well, until then, check the graphs and the photos from today’s dives.

David’s comments:
When Rudi said that “…the cold didn’t even bother us much.” He must have been talking about himself and Yasemin. Jumping in the water I immediately noticed I should have saved some pee to keep my suit warm. Don’t deny it, I know you do it! I just admit I do ?. I decided to do some facial immersion and that lasted approximately 15 seconds before I jumped on the platform keeping all limbs out of the water. I did two dives today to 40m and this is a comfortable depth for me. I wanted to use these dives to check the Orca suit which met and exceeded my expectations. Perfect for unassisted, but as Rudi said, you have to wear a dorky looking swim cap. First dive went well but freefalling was really slow due to lack of weight. My new suit has varying thickness from 6mm chest, 4/3mm on the legs, and 2mm on the arms. So, a little too buoyant. I came back to the surface and Rudi asked if I wanted to dive again. I was freezing but wanted to dive again so I jumped back on the seat. Rudi asked how many breathing cycles I wanted and I said “1” because I just wanted to get it over with. So I had a rest time of about 3 minutes between two 40m dives. Not too smart but I was able to get 2 dives in and work on my technique which needs work. Well, our first diving day has come to an end with good results. See you tomorrow!

Yasemin’s comments:
The cold did bother me as well. I had a 3mm suit made, with Velcro all on the sides of the body and all under the arms, that takes me about 5 seconds to take off. Without this there was no way I could resist the temperature during the warmup with a 1.5mm wetsuit. While passing by David doing facial immersion I was telling to myself “wow, he’s really brave and dedicated, there is no way I’m gonna do that now”. Now is when I find out that he actually didn’t continue any more than that… I kept my velcro top on during the warmup as well as during my final breathing before the dive, taking it off only before my last breath almost. But still during the last few breaths I was trembling way too much, making it a bit hard to breathe and contracting my muscles a bit. The dive went well in general but a little tiring, after making the adjustments with the weight and getting accustomed to the place this should not be a problem anymore. I’m hoping that tomorrow the weight and therefore the dive speed work well, so we get set for the record depth.