Sydney Freedivers 2009

Sydney Freedivers Feb Meeting

We had our Sydney Freedivers meeting and AGM on Wednesday night. We had about 25 attendees.

There were 3 new guys checking the club out...

There were 3 divers who had started training with the club who fixed up their membership.

Training:
Ant Williams did the training on setting goals for the year. Great talk... fired us all up. His briefing gave us an insight how to break down your year and even a single dive so as to handle each part of it better. He decribed pitfalls one can get into if they don't set realistic goals.


Club Elections
Ant Judge announced that he was standing down as President to concentrate on his training but would still be able to help people and do training and workshops for the club.
Elected for 2009
President: Judge
Safety Officer: Chris Harding
Club Sec: Luke Dolan
Treasurer: Sina Schieweck
Sports Sec: Jasmine Bastow

General Business handled:
3x the size of SF inthe year as a Goal... 45 members needed total.
Max Nights 4 minimum to be run
AIDA comp... at least one this year
Judging Course for AIDA being run in March
Charters to handle wreck diving and CWT training
Freediving Doco being filmed on Sydney Freedivers over the year.
Basic and Advanced Equalization workshop for members run Feb/March one day, theory and ocean practical.
Sydney Freedivers website under counstruction Sydney Freedivers but is viewable right now and has already brought in new people.
Facebook acc to deliver news and meeting invites to SFs.

We then played 3 freediving videos.

It was a very positive start for the year and attendees left pretty fired up.

Judge

March was a big month for us in Sydney Freedivers.

We run an Equalization Workshop. It was held over one day with the morning in the lecture room and the after noon in the ocean.

The purpose was to get everyone using the Frenzal Method and knowing that they were plus introduce the members to the BVT method. Ant and I both use this method and have developed drills to aid in the teaching of it, and we are getting results. After viewing cut away pictures of the head so everyone knew how equalization was achieved we went into the drills. In the afternoon we had club members doing negative dives where they were forced to equalize with their mouthful and not depend on the diaphram. Great day and of the 10 divers 2 were able to achieve some level of BTV.

The next weekend four of us did an Advanced 1st Aid/CPR/Oxygen Administrator course. Study, practical and exams for 8hrs a day for 2 days... harder than diving. This brings the number of thus trained divers in Sydney Freedivers to 7.

The weekend after than one 4 of us from the club along with 3 enthusastic interstate freedivers did the Level E International Judging Course under Grant W Graves. This was arranged by our AIDA Nat. It was a great thing for all levels. Great for Australia with seven new E level judges, great for Sydney Freedivers to have four judges but we all personally got a lot out of the course that can't help but change our diving.

Despite our close proximity to the ocean the sport of "freediving" is not big in Australia. Our NZ neighbours are years ahead of us in regards to infrastructure and results however we are making in roads and the next few years are going to make a big difference.

If you are interested I am making regular updates on our website: Sydney Freedivers with the most recent additions in the subjects of "Safety" and "About the club".

Keep calm and go deep.
Judge