Saturday night rolls around and after a very large dinner (24 oz of ground turkey on a bowl of veggies) I get a text saying we found a reliable safety diver and to meet at the boat ramp at 8am.
Sunday morning greats me with a sunny and windless day. At 8 am sharp we are inflating my boat loading up and heading out. Immediately outside of the harbor the water clears. It's already going to be an EPIC day. The water is so clear it feels like I'm driving my boat on air. 10 min outside the harbor and in 50' of water you can still see the sea floor and details of all the fish swimming around. 5 minutes later we are at the wreck. No need for a gps as we can STILL see the bottom and all the fish swimming around the wreck at 85'. Our routine is set and it only takes us a couple min to get tied off to the St. Pedro.
As freedivers it's vital to our comfort to warm up and kick start our dive reflex. To start the process we relax face down in the water with our masks off and breathe slowly through the snorkel.
After about 3-5 min we start taking turns pulling down the line. The objects of this is to pull down as slowly as we can, so that we get use to depth, and contractions.
The first pull down I get to 33' and check my buoyancy (I want to be neutral at 33'). I tucker down and relax at 1:20 the contractions become a nuisance. I let go of the rope and float up. After the ok sign the next diver in the line goes and it's my turn to make sure he comes up well and "OK". My second warm up I go all the way to the wreck and just relax. 2 min later I start pulling up the line very slowly, and at 30 ft I have to start breaking on the line so I don't float too fast. Total time was 2:26 same as last weeks dive. I was a little disappointed as I was hoping I would be able to do a longer warm up this week.
As we finish our warm ups the 1st submarine greats us with perfect timing. We head over to our location and wait for the sub to turn around. As we see it head back towards us we dive down
and check off the first Photo on the list.
I tap my buddy twice on the shoulder to let him know its time to ascend. We watch each other closely as we ascend. I have a stronger kick cycle than my buddy so I normally it the surface 2-5 seconds before him. Our safety greats us at the surface and watches both of us. We do a couple more of the same dives to make sure we get what we need. On the way up from one of them I notice he has two more logos I didn't notice before. One on his leg and one on his chest. So I try a couple shots of those.
Man! they did not turn out at all.. scratch that idea.
The next shoot is of a sketch I drew while working a graveyard shift prior to the dive. I always like to do a fast sketch of What I expect on the dives. It allows me to get my composition down faster, as its hard to think when you have 100' of water above your head. As well as allowing my dive partner to familiarize what I would like him to do.
I decided since the submarine only comes around every 45 min that it would be more efficient to just use the St. Pedro as a backdrop. This photo involves diving down to 85' and swimming horizontally across a ledge to the ship wreck and then back up. The swim cost a lot of energy so I want to do this in the least amount of shots possible.. the first try Paul swims way to fast and I miss the composition as I'm almost directly behind him trying to keep up.
It takes us a couple more dives before I decide to call it a day on that idea.
I have to go number two, so I swim out far away from our boat. while the other two decide to take a snack breaks on the inflatable.
While we are all sitting on the boat I notice a dive charter heading towards us. As the YO257 and the St. Pedro are very popular dive locations I have come to expect dive charters showing up. Most of the time its no problem as the only boat to ever give me problems is the SeaFox. When the boat gets close I can tell it is the Seafox heading towards us. When the boat gets to 25 ft of us he slows his engine down and tells me he wants the buoy to moor off of. I'm a little annoyed by his attitude and lack of attention to detail as The mooring ball is located on the YO a good 200 ft away. If he would have slowed his role and checked his line ups or gps it would have told him exactly where I was.... But I kept my cool and let him know that I'm Tied to the St Pedro and he can have the mooring ball all to himself.
Since the Scuba divers tend to make a wall of bubbles around the wreck we decided it would be perfect time to test out our New monofins. Mono fins take a bit getting use too as your feet and entire body has to work together. It was pretty funny watching Paul spiral and zig zag all over the water as we tried to dive to the bottom. With the incredible power the monofins gives us it was insanely easy reaching bottom. Only taking me two kicks to get past 30 ft. Paul grabbed my camera and snapped a couple photos of me as we played for 30 min or so.
having one more photo idea we get back to work.. I switch back to my by fins and feel VERY sluggish and slow.
THE BLACKOUT.
probably 10 dives prior I told Paul that my dives where starting to get worse and the contractions where starting to get tougher to bare. On our last dive we dove down
and met on the sea floor (84') as we waited for the sub to pass. While relaxed on the bottom the dive felt pretty good. I signed for Paul to head up, which was mistaken for look up( at the sub). So I took a couple more photos of him looking up at the sub which was now almost on top of us ( which was an awesome sight to see).
( remember wide angle lens so the sub is a few feet closer than what it appears in the photo!!)
Once I figured an angle of attack away from the sub. I pushed of the bottom and waited about 5 ft above Paul to make sure he was coming. By now I have had a few strong contractions. once he starts to ascend I push on upward.
I knew it was going to be a very rough ascent around 50' and by 40' I was having trouble.
Around 40 ft I my feet were getting heavy and my vision would snap black and then back into focus on the wreck. At this point Paul said he saw me start to kick faster, I honestly thought I new better than to do that, but I think its because my legs felt heavier or I was loosing muscle control I pushed harder to compensate for the feeling.
After the second flash I could feel a samba start and my arms and back start to spasm. I had FIVE more flashes, each one getting longer every time.
By this time I'm probably about 20-15ft from the surface. Paul grabs my arm, I'm pretty sure I can remember him grabbing my elbow and then I hit my final flash.
I'm aware of my face breaking the surface and that Paul is holding me. Immediately I thank him for the assist. I "woke" up so fast That pulling of my mask wasn't necessary ( SO I thought! I was actually out for about ten seconds.)
The general consensus is that I had a BO due to: dehydration ( 8 hour dive, no water) + exhaustion ( Hard dives all day for so long) = blackout.
You can read Pauls account and A LOT of good information regarding my BO here
Freediving at the level that we freedive at BO is something to be expected. We live, and train safety on all our dives. And make sure that we are prepared for the worst. This was MY first blackout experience.. But I've seen it before in other photographers and spearfishers. Thankfully with the safety measures we have in place and our wonderful preservation system our body's have in place; a black out only means that the diver is done for the day.
So we pack up and head home... I'm anxious to see if the photos will be worth it today.
I also forgot to mention that there are three resident turtles that have started to recognize us and come out to play when we arrive. They dive when we dive.. and ascend when we ascend. They swim up 2 ft from us and just hang out next to us. its pretty cool * Hawaiian law will not allow us to touch them or harass them in any way doing so will lead to a very hefty fine ( like 20,000$)
