The mood almost turned wrong last night. What kind of a weather forecast is that? Are the Gods against us? According to the weather people, we were going to face many days of winds with forces up to 7 Beaufort, which means big waves, risks of damaging the sled, more trouble in the warm-up phases for Herbert – pretty much the worse kind of situation we could come across! If this was a heroic fantasy movie, we probably would have to sacrifice a few virgins in order to see the weather lean in our favor again.

But we did awake to a glorious morning, sunny skies and pretty flat seas, so the well being of the virgins ended up guaranteed. As we had the visit of two reporters from the Stern, a leading German weekly, we quickly set out, raised sails and moved to one of our sheltered spots where training could start again. The choice of the deep sites was actually one of the reasons leading to the choice of Santorini to conduct the event. All going well, the topography of this islands and its neighbors should ensure that we can always find a place with enough wind protection to work properly. The main issue being that we can’t allow the sled to shake up and down in surface waves, and the second issue, being that Herbert’s preparation, mainly the last breathing and packing phases before the descent, must be conducted in calm waters for him to run his routine comfortably.

So we did end up having a glorious day. The team is now heading into a routine which ensures that each team member knows precisely what his duties are and focuses on his job and nothing else. Two training dives on the sled were conducted today. A warm-up to about 80 m. with still a couple technical issues and a second dive to 113m. where everything went smoothly and perfectly. Herbert left the sled on the way up around 40 meters, accompanied by one of our safety divers to reach the deco line and perform his very own freediving decompression routine before to swim gently to the surface and complete the protocol.

There is lots to say and explain about the sled design, the whole safety concept, the back-up solutions Herbert has conceived and his very particular approach to decompressing after a (very) deep freedive. More about all this stuff soon in our next posts. Stay tuned, even if the gods start playing with our nerves and start blowing strong winds on the project, we feel safe knowing there is still plenty of time and we’re definitely on schedule so far.

It’s happening right now, out there in the Med: one of the greatest human endeavors ever undertaken and certainly of one the last true adventures to be witnessed!

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