the black hole

Hi guys, I wrote this yesterday, didn't have such a deep dive today but it felt nice and relaxed.

I've almost been here a week now and still feel like I'm just getting used to it. It's a shame that I only have another two weeks to go. The Blue Hole is pretty amazing and I'd love to stay longer to really be able to relax and get used to deep diving. The jet lag has finally worn off and my body is feeling a lot less stiff than it was when I arrived. It's only the rooster just outside that crows from about 3am and an over active mind that is keeping me awake at night now. I really need to sleep more. I don't feel too tired, but my pulse rate is still quite high after the trip (usually settles down after a week or so of getting a descent amount of sleep). The wind was quite strong yesterday and it created quite a lot of current in the Blue Hole which I think affected my diving quite a lot. I did a CNF dive to 48m. It was about 20s slower than expected and all of that was on my desent. I also had to work quite hard on the ascent, but perhaps was stroking too fast and losing efficiency. I had to do extra strokes from the surface due to the current and my poor entry. The whole dive was a bit panicky and not great.

Today I wanted to experience greater depth and decided to go Free Immersion in an attempt to relax a bit more at depth due to the fact that it wouldn't be such an effort to get off the surface or back up. We set the base plate to 57m. It was a fantastic dive and I still had plenty left when I reached the bottom plate and much more than expected at my return to the surface. I still had a little anxiety at about 45-50m, but managed to relax again and had no issues with equalisation. So, I'm proud to say that I've been deeper without fins than I have with now!

We still only have about 10m vis and it's really dark by about 50m, just getting blacker and blacker as you go down evidently. Hoping for some grat conditions soon! This always happens when I go places to dive!!!