Tuesday, September 23, 2008

DNF 87

This is sort of training diary post.

19.9.2008, Vesikko

warmup:
12 times 25 meters in 12 minutes, such that about 30sec dive + rest -> total 1 min each.

3 times 50 meters, with bit longer rests (couple mins, did not take time, should have).

approx 6 minutes rest.

87 meters. Quite easy, bit weird "tickling" in legs at some point and due to this I did not take the dive to absolute max.

http://www.freedivingfinland.net/results/index.php?op=profile&diver_id=105

Saturday, September 13, 2008

How deep can you go?

Very.

We went today for a dive at Leinonen, a small lake nearby Ylämylly. It's nice place to dive since it has very clear water. However, this time we were not that interested about the visibility, but the depth of the lake. So, the idea today was to make deep dives.

Sami had this buoy/weight/line system with him that allows safe dives to depths. Every time someone dives he/she is attached to this system with a short piece of string; the other end at the line and other to divers wrist. At the weight, which naturally is in the depths, in order to make it easier to see where the "goal" is. Today it was around 20 meters.

I first did couple of dives to somewhere between 10 and 15 meters. It felt a bit strange, since I normally dive in places where at these depths you would already see the bottom. However, I got used to it quite soon and was able to enjoy the dives.

After some practice dives I decided that it is time to go for the max. After somewhat easy dive now 20.6 meters is the deepest I've been (without scuba diving gear, this was freediving). However, when I was come back to the surface I noticed another line about 5 meters from our line (to which I was attached to). This made me feel very strange, as I thought that I had somehow escaped the line. Luckily this was not the case, but the other line was (most likely) a old fishing net buoy.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Spearfishing at Hanko

On August 30th I attended (again) a Spearfishing competition. This was held in Hanko and was the fifth competition I attended this year. Actually, I attended all the other competitions except Finnish Championships. There is one more competition to come (end of this month), but it seems I won't attend it.

Well. This competition in Hanko was not that big success for me. I went there in order to achieve ranking points, and in order to get these points you need to get fish. Good guess; I did not get anything.

I spent almost the whole competition time by looking for flatfishes. For me this meant diving constantly to somewhere between 4-8 meters. Bad mistake. All the fish was either very deep (around 20 meters) or very shallow (max 2m) water. E.g. one person who was in top three got several flatfishes only from about 1.5 to 2 meters. Thus, no diving needed. Damn.

This time I, however, was wise enough to spend my last minutes of the competition wisely; by taking photos. Here are three selected shots from the competition:



Colorful algae.


Jellyfish


Spot two spearfishers.


Btw. this competition also ended the spearfishing season 2008. The next competition in end of September is already next season's competition. In Finnish ranking I ended up being 29th with 54.71 points. I got points from three competitions. If I would have got my normal points (about 20) from either of the two competitions where I got no fish I would have had chance to be somewhere around positions 24.-26.