A newbies mind barrier

[seagull]

Ricochet, I know what you mean about the lakes ... I 'dived' in a lake 10 days ago for the first time. I say 'dived' cos I wasn't really diving, just swimming down a bit, and then back up.

This was the Aegerisee in Switzerland, which is pretty deep (I think - certainly has very steep sides to it), and I couldn't see more than about 3 metres.

I also had seen the pictures of Pikes around 30Kg or so, and well over a metre long, on the walls at a restaurant on the edge of the lake - Hotel Morgarten, can recommend it.

Now, I have no idea of whether I would be at risk from such fish, diving down deeper, but I know they have f***ing sharp teeth, and can be pretty agressive. Anyway, the fish combined with low visibility, and plants and stuff floating around in it, REALLY gave me the willies to start with , but on the second day, I really began to enjoy it.

However, I then started wondering, what is the point? I mean, it's fun swimming and all, but if you can't see anything, and it starts getting cold 2-3 metres below the surface, I wondered ...:head

Since then, I have been in the local pool 7 times, and it feels so constricting now, boring, and above all else, REALLY shallow. When I duck-dive, I have to be careful I don't bash my face on the bottom

Looking forward to the next trip to Switzerland, whenever I can afford it, and am thinking about a suit, since it's kinda cold ... in the meantime, perhaps I'll check out the quarries around here for the first time ....

 

[Ricochet]

Hiho

Originally posted by FreeFloat
By the way (being a scuba diver as well, myself) I can't see them getting annoyed over you having a line down. A lot of scuba divers also drag a flag float around with them - granted, maybe not in a quarry (though I can think of at least a few I've met who do)

Well, you might be right. I will consider to make a better floatline.

It sounds to me that you're solo freediving and I can understand that other freedivers must be pretty scarce in your area.

Usualy I'm with a friend or two, but I'm not sure if they are much of a help in case of an incident. We train and 'freedive' together and progress step by step
And I've already seen a few people there that could be called freedivers. I mean they were way better than me and had no problems reaching the bottom.

Something you might want to consider is to freedive when there are scuba divers around - on purpose I mean. Not that you'd be depending on them to rescue you if anything should happen, but because it's a lot more fun to "buzz" them, and they may just get a kick out of watching you too. Some scuba divers that I have done this with, see me having fun with less than half the equipment they're used to, and suddenly you have more potential wannabe freedivers eager to give the sport a try........

There are almost always scuba divers around and I also like to 'visit' them, as long as they aren't too deep. We then somethimes beckon to eachother. But my bottom time is not yet long enough (~1min) to really show off

Well, I made lots of apnea walking in the last days to improve my CO2 tollerance and my apneawalk time is at 2 mins now. Maybe when I go to my quarry tomorrow my bottom time has increased too!?

Regards,
Sascha aka Rico

 

[Ricochet]

Originally posted by seagull
I also had seen the pictures of Pikes around 30Kg or so, and well over a metre long, on the walls at a restaurant on the edge of the lake - Hotel Morgarten, can recommend it.

Now, I have no idea of whether I would be at risk from such fish, diving down deeper, but I know they have f***ing sharp teeth, and can be pretty agressive. Anyway, the fish combined with low visibility, and plants and stuff floating around in it, REALLY gave me the willies to start with , but on the second day, I really began to enjoy it.

On sunday I was 'freediving' in a lake near Leipzig (Naunhofer Kiessee). The visibility was worse then last year but still ok.
I realy enjoyed all the fish in there. Tons of trout.
I even saw a big pike (ok, not that big, but ~80cm) and observed it and followed it for a while until it fled. Damn, in this moment I wished I had a speargun :martial

 

[Ricochet]

I overcame the mind barrier

The day started quite bad.
The night was short and I found like no sleep. All in all I was more dozing than sleeping and I had to look at the alarm clock every houre. I got up at 9:00am and to my dissapointment I noticed, that it was raining. Despite the bad weather my buddy called me like arranged and we decided to stick to our plans.

We were lucky. As we arrived at the quarries the sun finaly found its way through the cloudes and turned the day into a nice late summer day.

This time we took wetsuits with us so we can spend some houres in the water. The warmth of the wetsuit was essential for the following 4 houres of nice and calm dives in this cold quarry-water.

I made some warmup dives to 8m where I spend some time to observe a group of SCUBA students/teachers. I was surprised at how relaxed I felt and how far away the urge to breath was.

The next dives were similar relaxing. With a good duck dive and just a few fin kicks I glided down into the blue where I finally reached the deepest bottom and I still had enough air to look around and enjoyed this strange world that now felt so familiar.

From now on it was no problem to even explore the deepest parts of the quarry and nothing of the strange, rusty and gloomy stuff down there could scare me and I enjoyed to glide down into the deep just to appear next to some SCUBA divers and to amaze them

Despite the weather forecast the day became very sunny and all in all I hade some nice dives... my best apnea dives so far.


Rico