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.

What a day: CWT 65m NR and CNF 40m NR

I'm gonna put some more reflextions on this day later, but thanks to Martin, the news got out yesterday already.

And thanks to Fredrik, it made it to Dagbladet, a large norwegian newspaper!

I couldn't be more happy or satisfied, making both my dives on a single day. Not only where they national records, but also pbs of 4m each!

Even the 40m CNF dive went without problems, but afterwards I was dead tired. So I'm having a day of complete rest before the last competition day. Let's see what happens then ;)

Freediving Ras Mohammed

We had a great day freediving on the famous national park Ras Mohammed. Fredrik Naumann came along to take some stunning pictures, which can be seen here.

Photo and copyright: Fredrik Naumann

There was a very friendly turtle swimming around, just grassing on some corals and watching the excited freedivers pass by. I think I love turtles even more after this encounter, and I already had a crush on them before.

I also enjoyed the boat trip out back and forth. It just feels good to be really out at sea. The fun part was that the whole boat was packed with freedivers, not a singel tank on board!

CNF 36m PB

I'm surprising myself with the fact that I am capable of diving without fins. Before I always complained about my bad feet stroke and the fact that I'm equalizing with my hands, but it doesn't seem to hold up anymore (also due to the noseclip). So no more complaining, just training hard...


When swimming back in, we found this huge morey eal crusing in and out of the corals just on the entry to the Blue Hole. It was a big fat guy, and I even got a picture!

A flat sea and 61m

This morning I got up extra early to do yoga with Hanli and the other freedivers. The sea was completely flat, everything was quiet and calm. Just a lovely start of the day.


Then, when I got to the blue hole, I realized I had forgot my suit! Luckily I got to borrow a suit from Klara, and could get in the water and do my dive. I got down to 61m, managed the equalization and had a lovely swim back up.



The duck is launched and swimming, and we had a team relay competition out in the bay today. I was on a team with Fanny and Daan, but I can't really say that we were really fast. The czechs won with a speedy speedy swim, three divers, 20m/30m/40m all disciplins. Tomorrow it's the "noseclip only" competition, so more fun!

Training is on track

Hit 55m in CWT today, feeling good and strong still. I got to take a look at the beautifull arch before I turned around and swam back up to the surface. I also gave CNF another try, going for 35m. But I had a couple of problems with my noseclip, the bottom plate etc, and left it for another day.

We're all having a good time here in Dahab, and it's getting more and more crowded in the Blue Hole. I'm still pretty healthy (which is good by Egypt standard) and keep rinsing my ears and drinking water with salts. And if our neighboors are not too loud, I also sleep well at nights ;-)

The Bizzy Blue Hole 2009 competition started officially yesterday with a head-to-head static competition. I competed against Agnes in the first round, and went off to meet Klara in the semi finals. I beat her too, just after about 4 minutes, and got to the finals with Flavia and Hanli. But I must confess that it's not much fun doing three static attempts in a row with minimal preparation time between, and on the last dive, I came up early. Flavia won, Hanli second and I third. We all had a fun time!

The water is lovely, also in the bay, where Klara, Jens and I was swimming around a little. Maybe I'll just stay here.. forever!