leaving

It's sad to be leaving without seeing the end of the competition and having only just started to get my head around deep diving. The last two dives were the best mentally and I feel that with more time I would be able to go much deeper. I'm pleased with my results and progress over the last three weeks but might have to aim for a few months next year! I have no more chances to train until we get to Egypt in August, so I suppose we'll be back to doing 15m negatives in the cold mucky harbour over winter to keep the ears going and the body adapted. It was such a pleasure to dive without a wetsuit. It felt much more like I have always thought the sensation of freediving should. Now it would just be nice to get rid of the nose clip and goggles, neckweight, lanyard, depth gauge and cap. I wonder how much drag the hair on your head actually creates.
I'm currently wasting time in Miami airport. I'm quite impressed as every second food place sells salads – not just your usual hot dogs and burgers. That would have been good on the way over. I had ice cream for lunch yesterday. Only problem was that it had just bbeen unloaded from the boat so it was more like a milkshake! I'm flying American Airlines and the TV news in Deadman's Caye before the first flight said that a lot of their flights are cancelled and grounded at the moment due to technical troubles. Luckily I haven't been affected. I also saw that Frontier airlines, who I flew from LA to Orlando with on the way over has just gone bankrupt, so I'm pleased I idn't book with them to get home! They were so much cheaper than the others though, which was possibly the problem!

I'm holding out for an hour or so before I look up the internet for the final day's competition results. I hope the Kiwi boys pulled through and achieved their announcements. I couldn't get on line yesterday, which is why all my blogs are going to be posted at the same time.

It was really beautiful flying from Long Island to Nassau and then on to Miami. You could see the variations in the sea floor with the clear turquoise water over in a multitude of hues.
Last night all the eight kiwis and the odd straggling Canadian and Chilean came over to our apartment. A few of the boys had been swimming around as shark bait earlier and speared a couple of fish, which we put on the barbeque. George, the owner of the apartments took a bit of a liking to us and gave us a bag of crawfish tails (like crayfish). We had a huge feast and a few of us drank some random cocktails. The 1L bottle of apple flavoured smirnoff vodka was emptied as was the raspbberry flavoured Bicardi. Very nice. Spirits are really cheap in the Bahamas. Later Fran, Joy and I lay out on the deck under the stars. The stars in the Bahamas are really quite special. I really felt happy lying in the sand under the immensely starry sky, spotting shooting stars and just chilling out.

I just worked out that I've been travelling for eight hours already and still have 26 hours to go before I make it home. At least I didn't get a lot of sleep last night so I should be tired enough to sleep on the plane quite happily.