TRIPLE DEPTH - BEHIND THE SCENES

Ok, so this will be the last thing i'm writing about Triple Depth 2008, because we are all tired and we feel it's time to move on with our lives.

Lotta and I are going to be very busy during the next few weeks, with an Instructor Course starting tomorrow, and soon after we'll fly to Nice to be the judges for Guillame Nery WR attempt.

Hopefully the rest of July will be a quiet time so we'll have time to rest and sit home in our air con knitting and cooking :-)

But what I'd like to do here now, is to thank all the staff that worked in TD, and try hard to say something nice about each one of them :-)

The safety

Let's start with the lazy Spanish safety, Miguelito and Alex. They weren't lazy because of bad intention, but just because it's written in their spanish genes. This is why we love them anyways.

The only thing i blame Alex for is his bad smoking habit. He smokes way too much, even though he cut to half his original dose, and as punishment he's always being sent out of Aqua Marina restaurant every time he is seen with a fag in his hand. We are going to abuse him more badly during the Instructor Course, so hopefully he will stop completely.

As for Miguel, he is the antipode of punctuality, and this is why i was so surprised to see him arriving in time for his safety shifts. Maybe that's because he was scared of me, remembering those times when, as my student, he was continually screamed after, especially for showing up late in the mornings (every single one!), using as an excuse the fact that he had to cycle against the wind.

As for Patrick, his bigger fault is being French, but since there’s nothing he (or us) can do about that, we decided to accept him as he is. The good thing is that he’s becoming very funny when drunk, especially when mimicking me during the party.

Marco the Rasta is actually even lazier than the Spanish crew. And on top of that he’s so easily distracted by any female presence, to the point where he only wanted to do the safety for the female athletes, and one time I had to do the safety myself for Liv dive, since Patrick missed an equalization and couldn’t go down, and Marco was looking at bikinis swimming about, missing completely the whole thing. Despite this, and the fact that he admittedly doesn’t wash his hair with shampoo since 1998, everybody loves him, and I have to say I miss him very much, because he’s very funny and nice with everybody.

The official surface videograper, and much more

Dean, our Canadian rock climber instructor(the one on the right in the picture) got caught into the freediving business when he fell in love with beautiful Katya, few months ago. Now that it’s to hot to climb he always comes diving with us, and our favorite pastime is to challenge ourselves in races for the faster rope puller at the end of the dive sessions. He still didn’t beat me, but I know he has a pull up bar in his place, and he’s training hard. He’s been working so hard during the competition, and we thank him from the bottom of our hearts, because without him we would have been in deep trouble.

The land coordinator

Peter Ericson, who can be seen standing in Aqua Marina restaurant with a binocular trying to understand what’s going on inside the Pyramid, and informing the athletes when it’s their time for the official warm-up. He’s also the one in charge of being polite with the tourist police anytime they come over (about 10 times a day) and ask the list of the athletes and nationality (yes, it’s the same every day!). Luckily it doesn’t have to be me doing that, because I’m well known for my short fuse, especially when confronted with useless bureaucracy and inefficiency.

The judges

Obviously I’m not going to thank myself, also because I’ve been a bit useless (I got flu 2 days before the comp). I’d like to thank Katya, who was also uselessly sick, but she’s been there, sitting in the sun the whole day in spite of feeling so weak. And thank you Lotta, for taking charge of everything and not making me feel bad about being absent when there was so much to do.

Judge Lotta wearing her Judge uniform

Next one is Judge Katya in her charming hat

This is me being silly, in a shot of Richard.

The drivers

I’m thanking the drivers only out of diplomacy (which as many of you know, is one of my best qualities :-) Thing is that our bright Bedouin driver Mohamed, got married just few days before the comp, and the wife didn’t want to release him from the bridal bed. So the poor guy had to co-ordinate from home some less bright relatives of his, who were often late, or lost, or didn’t understand, and whatnot.

The Scientist

Dr Erika Schagatay has been sitting on the platform taking measurements of every athlete after their performance, to see how hypoxic they were at the end of their dive (for some of them you didn’t need an oxymeter to see that, believe me), and how long they took before getting back to normal levels (some of them will never go back to normal, I suspect). Hopefully all this research will give us more information and open new doors and shed some light on the mysteries of this beautiful hypoxic sport :-)

THE STATIC COMPETITION

Hey, i almost forgot about the coolest static competition in the world!

It all happened at the Octopus hotel pool, where 9 worldclass athletes fought for the title of the "dahab' best breath-holder".

Since Natalia didn't compete, not surprisingly Lotta won the comp. She managed a 5.53 with basically no training, which is not so bad.

Here you see her, after her winning performance, together with Liv and George.

On 9 performances, judge Katya and i gave 8 white cards and 1 red.

Here we are, with Natalia being our safety surface camera, since she rescued us after our official camera's battery died :-)

Unfortunately coach George touched Liv before the 30sec window, disqualifying her 5.01 performance

2nd place went to Richard Wonka with 5.27

3rd place to Yuri Shmatko with 5.22

Ben Guyat almost got disqualified for showing the wrong finger (the middle finger!!) as an ok sign.

After the competition everybody went for breakfast, or so they said. I suspect they all went to the alcohol shop to get ready for the closing party :-)

TD - THE PARTY

Yes, the party was 2 days ago, and i'm late with the updating, but we were all comatose yesterday, especially me, and i only woke up at 7pm...

I didn't do anything special to be so wasted, (or i should say that i don't remember having dome anything special...) It's just the advancing age, and i think last time i partied until late i was still in my teens...

Anyways, Dean had my camera, and was supposed to take pictures of the ceremony with medals and the rest, but he got severely confused by the events and didn’t take any. So, the only pics I have of the party are the drunken ones (which I think everybody agree being the most interesting ones anyways).

Here you find some:

Me and the winner Rob the King

Lotta dragging people on the dancefloor

Liv and George with the drunk camera crew

Lotta had a lot of fun. She also got electrocuted when she got out of the pool and stepped on some electric spot. Apparently she found it very funny, and kept stepping on it just to get extra buzzes. Last night Ben (Guyat) was imitating her over dinner and I almost died laughing!

Richard has been photographed dancing wildly with Lotta, and several people jumped in the pool several times. They tried to throw me in the pool, but without success.

Lots of people have been telling me funny things that I did or say, but since I don’t remember any of it, I won’t report it here, because what I really think is that they just made it up with the intention of putting some obscure shadows on my stainless reputation :-)

As you can see from this one together with my italian posse, i look fresh and in control!

This is safety Marco after he finally managed to kiss the russian girl that apparently every guy is dreaming of (the same one with the pink wetsuit). He definitely looks happy enough. Paoletta the girlfriend seems not to mind Marco running after every decent looking girl, probably because she knows that unlike all other italian men, Marco talks a lot and does nothing.

Richard and Patrick being very happy

This one is for Ben's mum, just to prove that he's still alive and doing well. Don't worry Mrs. Noble, we're taking good care of Ben, and hopefully after the instructor course he will lose a couple of pounds :-)

If anybody has some good pics, please send them to me :-)

TRIPLE DEPTH DAY 3- SECOND PART

This is the Triple Depth headquarter, the Aqua Marina restaurant, where athletes meditate, stretch, get dressed and undressed, eat their egyptian breakfast (if Ibrahim remembers), fall in love (not very often), get tanned, feed the cats, and admire the cool snorkelers walking up and down with their fins on, stumbling on them, except the more advanced ones, who walk backwards, stumbling anyways, and all looking like a less evolved species of penguins.

National records of today were for:

-German Anna, who luckily made it to 40 without swallowing.

-Egyptian Ashod (35mt), who came up with a new goggle style. He did his whole dive with his goggles parked on his forehead. His excuse was that it was too dark with them on… (I really think he just didn’t want to admit that he completely forgot to put them on, like yesterday with his snorkel :-)

-Croatian Karla, who with a very original style (which has much to be improved) did a easy 47 mt dive and came up looking as pink as a rose (as we say in Italy).

-Croatian Slaven, who did a 43mt dive and new NR, broke few minutes after by Tomo who topped it with 2 meters.

These Croatians did so many NR these days they almost got boring. Jakov is the only entertaining one. Even if today he impressed all of us with a penalty-free performance! The judges were very happy to finally give him a white card!
Croatian Vedrana decided to turn half way down, and I do understand that she’s getting quite tired of setting national records just to lose them a hour later :-)

Poor Portuguese Mafalda has been sick ever since she arrived in Dahab, and finally today she felt a little bit better and tried a dive. She wasn’t as well as she thought, obviously, because she didn’t have a very easy exit. Had a samba, and dipped her mouth in the water before she could manage the SP.

Liv did a beautiful 40mt dive and came up happy and smiling. At this very moment she’s sitting here in the El Salam restaurant (second favourite restaurant of the TD athletes), having some dodgy conversation (too dodgy to report here) about Natalia Molchanova pee, which she’s supposed to bring back with her to UK and send it to the lab in Germany… yes, yes, that Liv, the polite and shy one! (I’m awfully shocked!)

American Rob of course did a very clean and very easy dive. On the other hand he announced 35 meters…the chicken. Obviously he was aiming to secure for himself the 1st place and win TD 2008.

Here's another beautiful pic from Nanna. It's of the laziest of the athletes, Ben Guyat. During the whole comp he showed up only for CWT. And he doesn't have any yalla yalla excuses (dodgy belly). I think that he spent too much time in Egypt, and got transmitted some egyptian genes into his DNA.

Italian Andrea (yes, the one that pretends to be Swiss) felt very lazy and announced 10 mt less than his own Swiss NR, but that was enough to secure him the 3rd place in the overall points.

As for Aussie Ben, I’d like to say to his mum not to worry, and that whatever happened with the safety divers is in the past, and that everybody loves him and that he’s still alive and happy and well fed :-)


Here's a pic of Natalia during her final preparation just before her final countdown. And yes, believe it or not, the one on the right is a woman wearing a PINK tailormade wetsuit, and if you could zoom in you would also see that she has a personalized mask with strass on the frame...Sorry, I'm not going to comment on that one.

TRIPLE DEPTH DAY 3

It’s over!!
The pyramid is already on a truck and the Blue Hole looks exactly like any other day of the year!

Here’ the result list of today

1 Ingela Karlsson 14mt ok
2 Martin Wikstrom yellow card (early turn)
3 Sofus Kreutzmann 42mt ok
4 Mafalda Oliveira 23mt yellow card (dip mouth)
5 Richard Wonka 28mt ok
6 Jakov Kastelar 30mt ok (hamdulillah!)
7 Angela Ambrosi red card (SP)
8 Ashod Papazian 35mt ok (NR)
9 Robert King 35mt ok (chicken!)
10 Vedrana Vidovic yellow card (early turn)
11 Ben Noble 40mt ok
12 Anna Von Boetticher 40mt ok (NR)
13 Liv Philip 40mt ok
14 Andrea Zuccari 41mt ok
15 Slaven Cubric 45mt ok (NR)
16 Tomo Vrdoljak 45mt ok (NR)
17 Veljano Zanki no start (yalla yalla)
18 Karla Fabrio 47mt ok (NR)
19 Natalia Molchanova 60mt ok (WR)

As for the winners, ladies and gentlemen, i have the pleasure to announce the following:

As for the boys, the winners are:

1st place Robert King 176 points

2nd place Slaven Cubric 156 points

3rd place Sofus Kreutzmann, Andrea Zuccari, Tomo Vrdoljak, all with 145 points (which is awfully bad, because we don't have 3 bronze medals ready!!)

And the girls:

1st Karla Fabrio 165 points

2nd Liv Philip 151 points

3rd Natalia Molchanova 142 points

This one is of the warm up lines, with Natalia during her preparation.
Oh, by the way, i forgot to say she did another world record today! she dove 60 meters CNF, beating Natalia Avseenko record of 3 meters. It looked like a very easy dive (and very long), and again she made a big smile as she broke the surface, as to confirm that she was feeling very fresh.

Unfortunately my camera died the very moment Natalia came up from her dive, but hopefully somebody will send me some pic that i can upload...

This beautiful pic is of Sofus (shot by his sister) (she shot the picture, not her brother) (unfortunately), who promised to marry me and then he showed up with a girlfriend... bad guy, and i forgot to give him the red card! Sorry Ingela, but it's time you know who you're dealing with :-)

Sofus, Ingela and Martin were the first diving today, because they had a flight early in the afternoon, so they had a taxi waiting for them in Blue Hole, jumped in the water, did their dives and jumped in the car with their wetsuits still on (almost).

Ingela did a very impressive dive to 14mt, and she even managed to get the tag! There was a lot of tension during the 2 minutes before OT, but she was very focused, and she did it! Safety Miguelito impressed everybody, since he dove with her the whole way!!

(She's not very fond of CNF, so i guess she just decided to have some fun.)

Martin had his lanyard on his wrist, which appeared to be a bad choice, since it got tangled all around his arm, making the breast strokes almost impossible to perform. He wisely made the decision to turn (which surprised many!) and came up 10 meters too short but clean.

Sofus had the same set up for his lanyard, and it also got tangled during his descent, but he wisely started swimming only with his legs, having the time to fix the lanyard before the turn.

As for the rest of the daily report, i'm now running to the meeting, so i guess i'll find some time later...

TRIPLE DEPTH DAY 2

CONSTANT WEIGHT

So, it’s 3pm and I just got back from Blue Hole.
Here you find the result list of today:

1 Ingela Karlsson 33mt ok
2 Jakov Kastelar 41mt yellow card
3 Georgina Miller 43mt ok
4 Rahel Zemoi 50mt red card
5 Tomo Vrdoljak 50mt ok
6 Olga Suryakova 50mt ok
7 Angela Ambrosi 50mt ok
8 Richard Wonka 51mt ok
9 Andrea Zuccari 52mt ok
10 Ben Noble 53mt ok
11 Vedrana Vidovic 55mt ok (NR)
12 Anna Von Boetticher 50mt yellow card (early turn)
13 Liv Philip 57mt ok
14 Martin Wikstrom 57mt ok
15 Yuri Shmatko 58mt ok
16 Karla Fabrio 61mt ok (NR)
17 Slaven Cubric 63mt ok
18 Sofus Kreutzmann 60mt yellow card (early turn)
19 Ashod Papazian red card
20 Ben Guyat 67 mt ok
21 Robert King 72mt ok
22 Veljano Zanki 80mt ok (NR)

Thinking of all the dives i’ve seen today, the first thought that comes to my head is: how difficult can be to do a duck dive?

On the platform poor Dean and Katya (and especially the surface camera) have been splashed and showered quite regularly every 8 minutes.
Twice I risked to be decapitated (or at least severely injured) by a monofin, but luckily I saw it coming and moved away, and the blade missed me of just few centimeters.

So, next year we’re planning to have a one day “duck diving course” before Triple Depth, which hopefully will benefit the athletes diving and especially will preserve our lives :-)

Today was again very windy so not many snorkelers were out there. The few that attempted an invasion were kept away by Vedrana, who took the charge of the surface patrol :-)

Natalia Molchanova wasn’t diving today; our spies reported that she’s resting for tomorrow big dive.

By the way, some people are wondering why Sara Campbell is not competing this year. She is in the UK now, taking care of some personal stuff. We hope things will be sorted soon, and that she’s back in the water soon :-)

Today, again, no black outs. Judge Lotta is becoming very restless; 2 days in the comp and she didn’t kiss anybody yet!!

Like yesterday we had only 2 LMC (Swedish Martin and Russian Yuri). Which is a shame, because is well known that sambas and black outs are all people want to see in a comp;-)
In any case, they did the SP in time and both got white cards.

Andrea (he’s Italian, but pretends to be Swiss) will get the medal for the quickest dive: 52mt in 1.09. I think he was showing off for his photographer, with the result that he was so quick that she missed him and didn’t take any picture of him :-)

Jakov will get a medal for the one that collects more penalties. Also today he did an early start, plus grabbing at the start, and grabbing at the end.
It’s funny to see how some people go to a competition ignoring completely the little rules that cost them red cards and minus points.
Rules are on the internet, so please, download them, read them, and ask questions to the judges when you don’t understand something!!
(some judges might not know the answer, but at least you tried:-)

6 national records were announced today, but only 3 were successful, and all of them are Croatian! You will think: how’s that possible?...one male, one female, and what else?
Like yesterday, Vedrana does a record dive, and short after Karla adds few meters on top of it. So Vedrana today had her record for a whole one and a half hour :-)
As for the guys, Veljano did an 80 meters dive, beating his own NR of 4 meters (if I remember correctly)

Rahel got confused and forgot to put her noseclip on. She realized when she was about to duck dive, and she managed not to touch the water and to put it on before the 30 seconds window, but then she turned very early. It was definitely not an ideal start to attempt a pb.

Anna as usual swallowed her mouthfill, missing the chance to add one meter on her German record. It’s still her record anyways, and she didn’t seem to be upset.

Ashod was trying a 65 meters and had problem equalizing. The funny thing is that he dove with his snorkel in his mouth, forgetting completely to leave it on the surface :-)

Judge Lotta was in the water wearing a pink cowboy hat on top of her metallic blue suit, not looking very fashionable at all. Hopefully some kind soul will send me a pic of that, so I can post it here.
I’m planning to wear my Chanel hat tomorrow, and I’m sure I’ll look much more posh than her :-)(apparently Italians have the fashionable cells in their DNA)
Katya (despite being Ukrainian) has very good taste, and was wearing a big black hat with charm and elegance.

Marco the Rasta safety diver (many of you will remember him in Sharm during the WC) is getting very easily distracted but the bikinis swimming around the competition area, sometimes forgetting it’s his turn to do the safety. Tomorrow we are going to have somebody patrolling the area and forbidding all the half decent looking girls to enter the water during the deep dives :-)


Tomorrow is CNF.
Stay tuned for the updates and the final results.

TRIPLE DEPTH DAY ONE

FREE IMMERSION

This year Triple depth turned out to be a small and chilled competition, since we have only 25 athletes.
So we celebrated this by starting with the first official top at 10 am.
The staff got to the Blue Hole quite early anyways, since every time we think everything is under control and we relax too much, something bad always happens and we make it JUST in time for the first official top!
(Just like that time when Lotta and I were so early with the preparation the day before the comp, that we decided to go shopping at the second hand shop, and we spent 3 hours in there, ending up measuring the rope at midnight!)

Luckily the wind was quite strong, so that the billions snorkelers were too scared to paddle about and the situation around the competition area was more or less under control. The platform has been invaded only once by a scary looking woman with 2 inches of make up on her face, and poor Dean (the official videographer) was too polite (or too afraid?) to tell her where she should move her cellulite.

Judges this year are Lotta Ericson, Linda Paganelli (that’s me!) and Katya Smirnova. We are 3 because Katya and I are so sick that the two of us put together barely make one functioning person.

As many of you might know already, the Russian machine, also known as Natalia Molchanova, did a new world record today, with an 82mt dive. Dive time was 3.47 (she’s taking her time!), and she did a very lazy ascent during the last 15mt, since she let herself very slowly floating up to the surface. She did a happy and perfect surface protocol in 9 seconds, and judge Katya showed her the white card. Natalia had the WR in FIM since 2005, but Sara took it during last year Triple Depth with a 81mt dive. Now she finally got it back, and despite the Russian self control she looked happy enough.

Another remarkable news is that there were no black outs today :-)
The only one not being happy about this is judge Lotta, because she is well known in the freediving world to be the one that always likes to kiss the blacked out divers (especially the boys). Truth is that she must do it so well that they wake up so fast after the kiss :-)


Finnish Ingela had a LMC and didn’t finish the SP in time so she got a red card.
The only other LMC was of Swedish Martin, but he managed the SP in time, so he got a white card.
Another red card went to Croatian Veljano who was a bit confused with the SP and made a little mistake. Otherwise he did a nice 67 mt dive, ascending unassisted (at least in the last part, because I saw his dive from the surface).
Jacov was also DQ’d for the surface protocol. We noticed Jacov does everything way too fast: he started 5 seconds before OT, he announced a divetime of 2.30 and completed the dive in 1.30, and did the fastest SP I saw. So fast in fact, that he didn’t have the time to locate the judge.
Sweet Rahel got a yellow card for early turn and for starting 1 second before official top!

Everybody else was doing fine and made us all happy.
6 new national records were set.

German Anna did an easy 53mt dive beating her own national record. When she’ll stop swallowing (her mouthfill!) and she’ll work a bit on her technique, she’ll dive much deeper :-)
Another national record went to beautiful Croatian Karla, who dove to 57mt, and took Vedrana’s NR of 47mt, which the latter had the pleasure to hold just for around 1 hour (since she just dove shortly before Karla).
Egyptian Ashod did a 52mt new NR (well, he’s the only Egyptian freediver still living, no wonder he’s holding all the records!)
Ben Noble did an Australian record with a 52 mt dive, and Mario took the Portuguese record doing 45mt.
Ben managed to upset the lazy Spanish safety crew, so if I would be him I wouldn’t attempt a deep dive tomorrow…you never know.

Rob King from US did a beautiful 69 mt dive and came up with a big smile (he only does it because otherwise I hassle him for not looking happy enough!), and his tag “velcroed” to his neckweight. Since I’m a bit evil (and some people might think that BIT is not quite the right word) before he had the chance to do anything, I screamed “he doesn’t have the tag!!”, and you should have seen how quick his sweet smile got replaced by a horrific look :-)

Here's the results of today and the starting list for tomorrow (CWT)

FIM results

FEMALE
1st Natalia Molchanova 82
2nd Karla Fabrio 57
3rd Liv Philip 54
4th Anna Von Boetticher 53
5th Angela Ambrosi 50
6th Vedrana Vidovic 47
7th Georgina Miller 34
8th Ingela Karlsson 0

MALE
1st Rober King 69
2nd Martin Wikstrom 55
3rd Ashod Papazian 52
3rd Andrea Zuccari 52
5th ben Noble 51
6th Sofus Kreutzmann 50
6th Slaven Cubric 50
6th Tomo Vrdoljak 50
9th Mario Albunquerque 45
9th Richard Wonka 45
11th Veljano Zanki 0
11th Jakov Kastelar 0


And for tomorrow:

CWT Starting list (11th June)

1 Ingela Karlsson 33mt
2 Jakov Kastelar 41mt
3 Georgina Miller 43mt
4 Rahel Zemoi 50mt
5 Tomo Vrdoljak 50mt
6 Olga Suryakova 50mt
7 Angela Ambrosi 50mt
8 Richard Wonka 51mt
9 Andrea Zuccari 52mt
10 Ben Noble 53mt
11 Vedrana Vidovic 55mt
12 Anna Von Boetticher 56mt
13 Liv Philip 57mt
14 Martin Wikstrom 57mt
15 Yuri Shmatko 58mt
16 Karla Fabrio 61mt
17 Slaven Cubric 63mt
18 Sofus Kreutzmann 64mt
19 Ashod Papazian 65 mt
20 Ben Guyat 67 mt
21 Robert King 72mt
22 Veljano Zanki 80mt

Announcements and official things

The official meeting will take place in Octopus Hotel at 6.00 pm on the 9th of june.

The announcements have to be made before 5.00 pm at Octopus Hotel reception. There will be the wooden box at the reception. You will find the papers for the announcements next to the box (hopefully :-)

Remember to bring your medical certificate and your passport with you. If you don't have them you cannot register!!!

The first official top on the 10th will be at 10.00 am (and the first official warm up at 9.15)

Be on time at the meeting or you'll get penalty points :-)

See you soon

TRIPLE DEPTH UPDATE-THE TRAINING

TRIPLE DEPTH UPDATE-THE TRAINING

Most of the athletes are already here and training every day.

The Blue Hole is packed with pale Nordic freedivers, buoys, funky monofins, colorful wetsuits, and a big group of very confused Russian freedivers.

While all this happens at depth, on the surface the snorkeler's army coming daily from Sharm el Sheikh, formed mainly by brave and courageous Italians, who are fighting for their life, drowning in their life jackets, crashing in our buoys, stepping on the corals, screaming in their snorkels, kicking our heads with their sandals, walking on the shore with their fins on, showing the cellulite collected during a winter of lasagna and pizza, drifting away taken by the current, all this just in the hope of seeing some colorful fish, which they won't even see, because their masks are so totally fogged, and they don't have a clue how to clear them!

Anyways, careless of this dangerous environment, the freedivers keep training, sun tanning, eating Egyptian breakfast, and feeding the animals living at the Aqua Marina restaurant.

Today Rahel learnt how to do a mouthfill, el hamdullillah (thanks God), because she was being a big pain on everybody's butt with all her swallowing sad stories.
And Sofus learnt what the soft palate is, and everybody was making faces trying to move it, looking very stupid, and burping up their falafel.
On another table Anna was telling tales of equalizing with a noseclip, and how vital is not to swallow in your stomach, if you don't want to get these massive burps on the way up. By the way, i heard that if you burp in the judge face in the middle of the surface protocol you might get disqualified!!
Rob is the only one not causing any trouble, always being calm and nice, and too polite with everybody, especially with who doesn't deserve it!
For the moment nobody seemed to have touched the bottom of the Blue Hole on a single breath, except some of the snorkelers that perished during their incursions at our buoys.

During the afternoons everybody is getting very lazy, and have long naps. Not Natalia Molchanova, who is still in Blue Hole doing who knows what. We need to send some spies and investigate.

In the evenings the meeting point for dinner is of course the Funny Mummy restaurant, where everybody tries to have some healthy food, except Martin, who is eating like a pig, and has 3 apple crumbles with vanilla ice cream for dessert. He thinks all this ice creams is good for his equalizing problems, and he won't listen to anybody contradicting him.

Here's the list of the athletes:
Vedrana Vidovic -Croatia
Tomo Vrdoljak-Croatia
Jakov Kastelan-Croatia
Veljano Zanki-Croatia
Richard Wonka-Germany
Rob King-USA
Ben Noble-Australia
Sofus Kreutzmann-Denmark
Martin Wikstrom -Sweden
Karla Fabrio-Croatia
Slaven Cubric-Croatia
Anna Von Boetticher-Germany
Livvy Philips-UK
Georgina Miller-UK
Ben Guyat-UK
Ingela Karlsson-Finland
Natalia Molchanova-Russia
Ashod Papazian-Egypt
Rahel Zemoi-Eritrea
Mario Albuquerque-Portugal
Mafalda Oliviera-Portugal
Angela Ambrosi-Italy
Andrea Zuccari-Italy
Alma ? -Russia
Yuri Shmatko-Russia
Olga Suryakova-Russia

More updates during the next days...