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Day 13: June 11th 2004
Written by: Rudi Castineyra

Final day of our project is here, and as usual, it feels good and bad to be done. We are tired, overworked, sunburned, most of our ears have begun to clog up with the repeated deep dives, we wake up way too early anticipating the pre-dive boat set up procedures, the food feels greasier everyday, and yet, I know that tomorrow, when we realize that it is indeed over, we will not find ourselves in despair, but such is life. Anyway, today was Yas’ turn to “perform” for the press, in what had been originally announced as the record attempt day. As we had already told you before, we agreed that it was best for her to dive to 46 meters again and not risk going for something deeper. If by any chance she failed the attempt, we could always tell the press that this depth had already been achieved and verified earlier, which was still less of a loss than going for something and not achieving it. Then, as luck would have it, she was definitely in better shape and this 46 meter dive was real easy, I felt she could have done the 50 meter dive today, but once you commit to a decision, you must see it through and that we did.

Technically speaking, we knew that apnea capacity was not her problem, and that she could easily spend more time underwater than the usual 1:40-1:50 minutes she has been diving at. With that in mind, we decided that she would wear less weight, make a few more strokes on the descent and have an easier way up and make the strokes at around 60% strength and ride them as much as possible. She achieved the goal to perfection, with a dive time of 2:09 minutes, making 5 powerful strokes to the break point to overcome the disadvantages of the little weight she was using, did two more softer strokes until around 25 meters, and did 12 strokes for the ascent, riding every stroke to its max. She used 1.8 kg this time instead of 2.4 she was using which turned out to be the right decision for today. Upon arriving at the surface, she did her recovery breathing for 5-6 cycles, sat on the pipes and let out a sigh of relief, and of satisfaction, for she knew she had completed this dive in much better shape than the first one, when her back had given her so much trouble. I was also happy and relieved, regretting not having gotten our chance to go for those 50 meters, and have Yas be the first woman to reach that mark in unassisted, but then we still have a few more months until this year is over, and we will prepare with that in mind. Anyway, the dive was successful, the images played in all of Turkey’s main channels and were sent to the main international players, and there is no denying that after a long 2 ½ year absence, Yas is back and she is better than ever, ready to go for more records.

Final Thoughts from a Trainer’s Perspective

In conclusion, we accomplished everything we set out to achieve, with both Yas and David, they are the new Unassisted Constant Ballast World Record holders, and these dives were done under the safest of conditions, an even bigger reason of pride for us. I am also fairly pleased with the training I designed for them, as it was right on the spot, it delivered the apnea and physical conditioning needed for this very demanding category, and then they even had some steam left for more. I am sure that with some more rest before the record period for Yas, since the last 2 months before coming here were very hectic for her and she was traveling all around Turkey fulfilling sponsor obligations, while still training 4-5 hours per day and getting less than 8 hours of sleep, she would have been perfectly able to reach 50 or 55 meters, specially now that she has developed such a refined and effective technique. As for David, a dive to 70-75 meters was within his grasp right now, which he now knows and believes, but this was the first time that he was able to “break in” his ears below 50 meters, so the acclimatization process was slow and we ran out of time before he was feeling comfortable enough with his deep-water equalization technique to try something deeper. Nevertheless, their muscles worked well, both their techniques showed considerable improvement, and their dive times and Efficiency Rates were equal to those of the best monofin divers out there nowadays, which is no small feat considering we are talking about a category where the athletes just frog-kick down and up! So, with that in mind, I am also happy with the new directions I took for this training, and am even more excited with the new things I want to try for the immediate future with them. In that sense, things look good for our team and now all we need is for our sponsors to feel as happy and satisfied as we are with these results, which as you all know, is easier said than done, but we’ll see. Tomorrow will be the last day of our Diary, when we will announce the Contest winners, so stay tuned for those final results!

Yasemin’s Comments:
The decision we had given for today’s dive turned out to be right. Although the beginning of the descent was a bit difficult, I still had time to relax for the period of the freefall and I had a much easier ascent. My back was also in good shape finally and the weather had warmed up enough for us not to contract even before we start the dive. Anyway, although the final record depth is a little lower than we wanted it to be, I’m still very happy that we finally got the record. It’s been way too long time without real freediving and being back to it finally makes me remember how much I enjoy it. All three of us have been so sad after the records are over, because although we reached our goals, the fun part for us always is actually doing the dives. And it’s not so easy to put together such a safety team to allow us to do that. So we sat down right after the record to make the next record plan and plan the period till then. We will add the video of this dive in the upcoming week. We had to give our videos to the distribution agencies and couldn't recover them yet. So check this page later to watch the video.

I would like to thank all of our team members once again. Mutlu Gunay, Okan Ungur, Burak Doneray, Rebii Yoruk, Dimitri Rasputin and Gianluca Cora, Arthur Zaloga as safety divers and judges. Besides the diving skills they need to have, there is so much work our team has to deal with and the smoother that is the easier we can perform our dives. They all did a great job and make this possible for us. I also would like to thank my agent Hulya Sepken. Hulya has been dealing with the “sponsor hunting”, the media connections and all the sponsor/media arrangements for the record. She spent day after day speaking to the sponsors and the press on the phone all day long making the arrangements and being a shield for me to keep me away from such details and has managed it very well. We have managed to get the record extremely well publicized and make our new sponsors happy which will allow us to get the support needed for the upcoming record projects. So thanks to Hulya and her assistants Berker and Sule… Also our friends from Archipel Diving Center have given us a tremendous and very valuable help, we really appreciate it very much. And finally thanks to you all for following us throughout this time. We’ll be right back with a new diary for a record event in the near future we hope…

David’s Comments:
Something I really hate is the “after record feeling”. After training for so long and then the whole thing is over in 2:14 minutes. I guess the good thing is that there will be bigger better things to come. But I guess the sad part of records is watching our team go. Having to say bye one by one as the team you have grown so close to go their separate ways. I just keep telling myself that hard work and training will bring us back together really soon. All the guys mentioned above are truly top-notch divers and truly unique personalities. Looking forward to working with all of them again very soon.

I have to say, Yas is always a constant source of inspiration for me. I truly feel honored to call her my training partner. So Yas thanks for everything! You displayed technique which is dripping with perfection. Then there is Rudi who I have to give the biggest special thanks to. If he would not have believed in me, I would not be here now. He took a chance on a little Jamaican boy who didn’t believe in his own potential. Well Rudi, I believe! So thanks a lot and I am ready to go deep now.
In the end it’s really not so much the records that are the highlight of this period, but the people that you get to share these days with. I like to think of spending time with everyone as the highlight and the records are just icing on the cake.