Lubomir Stefanoff :: freediving and UW photography

Finally I made my first 40 meters free dive (constant weight)! Again we dived mainly off the rocks of the monastery in Thassos. We spent 4 days there and everyone made either a personal best or caught some good fishes, so it was just great. Now I have a hard time getting back to work and meeting the tight deadlines… I spend too much time thinking of the great dives and buddies.
In short, how I organized my 4 days of diving – on the first day: some easy dives with hangs at the bottom; second day – serial dives to 25-28 meters with long surface intervals and a lot of swimming on the surface with the buoy, rope and weights…;on the third day I swam a lot to find greater depths and got a bit tired and gave up the idea of doing deeper dives; yesterday before our departure to Sofia we had the chance to use a boat (Big thanks to Ceco!). The day started with some rain and clouds but at noon everything was fine and we cheered up. We found easily 45 meters off the rocks and set up the line. This was the second time we unrolled the whole length of the rope (I’m using my old climbing rope which is about 42 m long). I was diving with Mitko and each of us followed his own warm-up routine. I did several dives to 25 m, some shallower dives,and a few 30+ m. Mitko did a nice dive (pb) despite the noise of the ship passing nearby. Then it was my turn to dive. I felt relaxed, but my legs were tired from the previous days…still I knew I could dive to 40 meters and come up fresh. Again I managed to calm down and visualize the whole dive in a positive manner.
After the duck dive, I kicked a bit too hard and I heard the alarm at 30m a bit sooner than usual; equalization was fine, at 35 m I looked at my divewatch, closed my eyes and reached the 40 m mark. I felt I could’ve gone deeper and hit the bottom, but these depths are unexplored for me and I’d better proceed gradually and gain more experience in the 35+ to 40 range.  I felt okay during the ascent, Mitko again was waiting for me at 10 m and I surfaced still fresh and smiling – my new pb – 40 m. The whole dive took 1:20 which is a bit fast, but I’ll reduce the weights on the belt next time – 3,6 kg are more than enough for 7mm trousers and a 5mm jacket. The dive felt good despite my tired legs, and it seems that I’ve learned to relax and concentrate better than before. Also, setting some specific goals for each training/diving session works great because it reminds me why I’m there and helps me focus on the task. I think it’s crucial to define for myself what I want to achieve/experience in freediving and just make and enjoy the necessary steps…

The Skandalopetra games start tomorrow in Lindos, Rhodes island and will last till 28.06. Last week I found by chance the SKANDALOPETRA group in Facebook and learned more about this event. Organizers are The Free Diving Association of Thessaloniki, the Municipality of Lindos (Rhodes-GR), Apnea Academy Competition and Apnea Evolution Hellas.
Unfortunately I won’t be able to participate…I’m sure it’s going to be great since I’d dived many times at St. Paul bay in Lindos last summer. And I was lucky to meet the guys from Apnea Evolution and Dr. Nikolas Triklis (the organizer of Skandalopetra events) and try this ancient technique. I’ll tell you more about this experience in the next paragraphs.
It was in mid September 2008 – I had just started my (long) vacation. I arrived in Rhodes by chance – Diana, a friend of mine, departed with the intention to stay there for 2 weeks and invited me to come by. I also planned to stay for 2-3 weeks which turned out to be 45 days…(I started a part time job to cover some of the expenses). Rhodes island is a great place not only because of its rich history, but for the diving sites and the clear blue water.
One day I headed with Diana to a city called Lindos, (I’d heard that the nearby St.Paul bay is a nice place for diving). It really was – I did some freediving in the calm and crystal clear water when I noticed 3 divers with a round buoy approaching. At first I thought they were spearfishermen, but soon I realized they all wore C4 fins and Elios suits and didn’t have spearguns…obviously freedivers. That’s how I met Rosarita, Alessandro and Antonio from Apnea Evolution. They set up a line for constant weight and kindly invited me to join and reminded me that solo freediving is dangerous. I couldn’t believe it was real – I had arrived at the right place at the right time and met some great people! Rosarita and Antonio told me that on the next few days they were going to practice ’skandalopetra’ diving with Nikolas Triklis and suggested me to join them. Honestly, at that time I knew nothing about skandalopetra…
On the next two days I had the opportunity to dive with Alessandro, Rosarita, Nikolas Triklis and a large Italian group of freedivers who had come on  ‘Apnea vacation’ in Rhodes. I learned what skandalopetra is (a variable ballast dive using a 12 kg stone tied to a rope. A companion on a boat recovers the diver pulling the rope after the descent; you can learn more about skandalopetra here and why not join the FB group?). I did some dives – it was a bit strange in the beginning to dive without a mask and a wetsuit, but soon the joy of falling down with the stone made me forget about the cold. The second day of skandalopetra diving happened to be my birthday and I think that diving with these people was the greatest present. I still remember vividly the feeling of these dives and the positive people around me.
I won’t be able to come to the Games starting tomorrow, but I’ll definitely participate in skandalopetra events some day (maybe in Kalimnos).

Two weeks till the next freediving trip to Greece… This weekend we had to settle with an outdoor swimming pool (in Sofia) which was a good place for training.  Despite the parties held on Friday night, 6 freedivers/spearfishermen appeared at the pool on Saturday – it’s a good number, considered tha fact that freediving and pool training for spearfishermen are not very popular in Bulgaria…yet. One of the pools is 5.6 m deep and in the morning wasn’t crowded. We did many dives and static apneas there – you can see the clear water on the pics. I wasn’t able to do longer apneas because of the cold – I was shivering in my surfing wetsuit after an hour in the water.

Mitko was doing great and logged several good dives on my divewatch. He even broke my humble 2:20 record (done at 10m last summer), so I decided to wear a full wetsuit ot Sunday and log a better time – it’s my watch…and I had done much longer static apneas without it! I thought for a while about my approach to freediving – I do it for fun and for my own pleasure, but I have to admit that I felt the competition demon in me.  I had won many competitions (not in freediving) and I like winning in general…but  I haven’t thought that this could be a driving force for my freediving… Well, we will see, I’m a beginner and I have to learn more about myself…Competing (with friends) is not a bad thing, we had a lot of fun during that two days. (I guess I bother with ‘competing’ cause I’m far from the sea and had tons of work to do.)

We didn’t miss the chance to make some figures in the pool – it was kind of hard in the beginning, laughing a lot underwater because of the lack of coordination between us. After a few tries we managed to form a decent circle on the bottom (Ivozag played with my camera and captured it; Thanks for the other good pics, Ivo!). We also attracted some kids  who were astonished at the fact that a human being could stay underwater for several minutes and come up alive! It sounds funny, but we had to be responsible when we train during public hours at the pool. Kids tend to imitate what they see…and doing that with freediving could be disastrous.

Sunday was a different day – much warmer, no wind…and full 5 mm wetsuit. I wanted to do dynamic apnea in the 50 m pool, but for a warm-up I did some static apneas in the deep pool. I regained the ‘record’ on my divewatch, but Mitko broke it again…Well I gave up the idea of max dynamics and after a short break started again with statics at the bottom.  Soon I set a new ‘longest apnea’ (according to the divewatch) that Mitko couldn’t break.  Next Sunday I’ll try to set a longer one, close to my PB (5:03 at the moment).

Finally I have the time to write about our last freediving trip to Thassos.  As I mentioned in earlier post, last Saturday was supposed to be a ‘max static’ day, but we headed for Greece again…The drive is a bit long but it’s definitely worth it.

On the first day we dived near Pothos, setting the line at 30-32 meters. I was a bit tired and did some 30m dives without pushing too much and staying at the bottom. I wanted to be fresh for the next day and attempt 35+ meters…

Well, on Sunday I hadn’t done any dives deeper than 25m for two reasons. First, we enetered the water from a nice beach, but we had to swim 30 minutes just to find 25m, the 35-40 m depth was not close at all, especially when we had to drag the buoy with weight and rope…And second, my buddy Di had some equalization problems and was not able to dive comfortably and wait for me at 10 m after a deeper dive. As a responsible person, I decided to dive deeper next time (in two weeks maybe) and do practice dives to 25m. I’m used to this kind of situatons when you have to do practice dives (shallower) instead of a performance dive…safety comes first.

Otherwise I felt great. I used a 5mm Cressi Technica vest and my 7mm (tailor made) trousers from Elios (and fewer weights). Equalization was fine, with some minor problems but I still couldn’t dive with both arms extented past my head…Hands free equalizing is one of the tricks that I have to learn to enjoy better freediving with the monofin… Later on that day I entered the water with my camera (wearing bifins) and took some macro pictures of small fishes and other creatures whose names I don’t know.  When I have the time I’ll process and upload some of them in the gallery.

P.S I’ve just read that Stephan Mifsud did a 11:35 static (new world record)! Simply amazing! Well, I’m not even halfway there…

I haven’t had a lot of time for training this week, so I decided to do dry CO2 tables 3 times. Well, I don’t like them at all but there is some value in doing them…especially if you cut down the rest intervals and don’t cheat with hyperventilating. Typically I do a few warm up breath holds an then I start the following table:
2:30 hold – 1:30 rest
2:30 hold – 1:15 rest
2:30 hold – 1:00 rest
2:30 hold – 0:45 rest
2:30 hold – 0:30 rest
2:30 hold – 0:15 rest
2:30 hold – 0:15 rest
I feel OK in general after the last breath hold – I am getting used to the contractions. On Wednesday and today I rested for 5-10 minutes after doing the table and attempted longer apneas – I did several around the 5 minute mark, but did not enjoy them much. I’d planned a max attempt in the swimming pool for tomorrow, but we are going to the Aegean sea (Thassos again) for 2 days of freediving so the max attempt will be on next Saturday. I’ll try 40 meters in constant weight if I feel ok, otherwise I’ll do other drills and take lots of pictures with my G9.