Today was the first of the competition days organized by Freediving.biz for the Bizzy Blue Hole. We met up with Dave at around 9:00 and arranged for a taxi to pick us up and bring us to the Blue Hole and back. Once we’d arrived we just got into the relaxing Aqua Marina lounge bar to sit a couple of hours. Dave was feeling quite a bit sick from last night’s food, but eventually he decided to do his first CNF (Constant weight No Fins) dive anyway. He made his depth of 30m’s but his stomache didn’t agree all to much.

I got into the water at around 11:30 to swim out and do a warm-up dive to about 25m’s. The warm-up felt really good and I was confident about my 35m CNF-dive.

After the warm-up, at around 12:00 it was my turn to make my freedive to 35m’s without fins. The first part went really smooth; duck-dive, the first strokes and equalisation were fine. At around 16m’s I got into the sink-phase and I could focus more on my equalization, but it wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped it to be. I looked for the plate and it was only a few meters away and just descended a bit slower, grabbed the tag and returned for the surface with the tag still in my hand.

I surfaced after 1 minute and 33 seconds immersion and took 3 breath’s, performed my surface protocol and gave my tag to the judge. A white card was shown to me, meaning the dive had been judged as valid. I’m very pleased with this nice performance, it shows me that I’m capable of doing a little more with some more practice hours.

Tonight’s registration will be at 19:00 and I might have list of the performances of today with the points and I hope to have a list of the starting times for tomorrow aswell.

So today we were up for a magic 3 and team static competition, which was held at the pool of our hotel. The magic 3 is basically static breathholding to what you think is 3 minutes, which I managed quite good, but still 18 seconds off with 3:18. The winner Georgina Miller had a time of 3:02 very close to the magic number ;).

The team static was very nice to do…it’s a small competition where 3 freedivers are put into a team and you have to hold your breath the longest of all groups. So head in the water, before your team mate surfaces. I was in the team with Daan Verhoeven and Ulrich Wulff and we managed to reach a time of 11:56 which was good for a 3rd place.

After that we arranged for a cab to bring us to the blue hole and start a training session. The road there is a bit bumpy, but as I heard Sven telling me that when he was there like 10 years ago, Dahab wasn’t the city as it is now. I started practicing with Daan and Sven and I had to say…Blue hole is just an amazing site. Althouh I didn’t do much more than train for 1,5 hours, my girlfriend Marieke managed to shoot quite a few very nice pictures.

Training went very well, as it was a warm-up day I didn’t expect anything above 25m’s, but turning up feeling well after each deeper dive was very nice. I tried to do the different styles and train with a lanyard, as that is my first as well. I think training was really good and I’m very pleased with today. With a maximum of 37m’s almost equaling my previous personal best, says enough. Free Immersion was also very nice and relaxed on which I was curious on which point the free fall starts, in my case at about 16m with 3 kg’s.

Later that night the briefing and registration for tomorrow’s competition was due and I registerd for the first day with a constant weigh without fins of 35m’s. The rest of the starting list is in the picture.

We’ll grab a cab together with Dave Tranfield and head out there at about 9:00 in the morning.

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 :D. 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.