CNF in the cold waters of Hemmoor

Martin organized the 1st Hemmoor No-Fins Only last weekend, which involved exactly that: diving without fins. I did overcome some of my prior sceptism for this disiplin in Dahab, but I soon found out that it's a whole different game doing it in cold waters. With a 5mm suit and a mask, I had a really hard time getting anywhere! It didn't help that my body was feeling weak, my throat was sore and my ears sticky.



After both training days on Thursday and Friday had been pretty bad, I decided against competing on Saturday. We had lovely weather that day though, and I had a good time hanging out, coaching Anna and fun diving in the underwater forest. After all, it was my birthday(!). We finished off with a nice barbeque with fresh fish from the lake.


On Sunday, I was feeling much better and had announced 30m. After some lovely warm-up dives and some calming words from Anna, I went for my dive. All was fine untill 13m, where I took a little stronger arm pull and glided before equalizing my ears. But they were stuck! That was it for the competition in my case, but there were a lot of great performances by the other freedivers. Both PB's and national records were broken. Anna von Boetticher and Jonas Krahn both did new German records in lake with 35m and 53m respectively, and they won a turtle each.

1. place overall

I must confess I'm very very happy with the results and the whole trip! The diving went almost perfect. I was doing the exact depth progression that I had hoped for, my ears were fit and working and I managed to stay pretty healthy. That's a very important part when in Egypt...


The 65m dive was one of my best deep dives ever. I felt the urge to turn around at some point, but managed to turn my mind back to relaxing. The last five meters I was fumbling a little with the equalizations, but reach the bottom without problems. The arch opened up like a big door of light and was so beautiful! I haven't had this much time to look at it before, and I enjoyed it alot. The way back up felt quite long and lactic legs meant I had to take my time, but at the surface I was still completely clear. There's still more meters in me!

I had such a good time with the group of nearly 50 other freedivers, old friends and new. I'm always sad to leave Dahab and the Blue Hole, and I hope it won't be another year before I come back.