Flutter
Contributor
My husband & I are on a 2 wk shore diving vacation in Curacao. We have met (and dived) with a solo diver here from France who has been solo shore diving for over 45 yrs (her entire diving career), by her own report. She owns one of the rental units where we are staying and dives solo here (& in the Mediterranean where she also lives on the sea) apparently 5 or 6 days out of 7, with a single 83 cu tank & a back-up pony bottle to depths of 200' or more, one dive each day. My husband & I talked with her (and others here who know her) before diving with her. She reports diving 250' to 270' or so - "many many times" - using trimix & a back-up pony bottle (she called our 100' Nitrox limit a "baby dive"). She says she dives for an hour & then has a 30 min safety interval along the way back. People that have dived with her, generally have stopped their dive at 130' to 150' or so (admitting that if you dive with her, you are really going to solo dive part of your dive as well). She then continues down on her own, as prearranged before the dive. (My husband & I dive Nitrox, so we stopped at 102' & she continued down on her own). When I asked about her being nervous diving to such depths on her own, she replied that during her training in France "many many years ago", students only had belts & regulators; during each student's training their regulators were shut off at 80' and they all had to safely surface in one breath; she has her pony bottle as her back-up, in case of trouble; she has excellent breath control ("not like divers, today" she told me); and "I am very, very careful" she emphatically claimed. My husband & I finished our dive, took our planned safety stops, cleaned off our gear, and she surfaced about 20 mins later. When she got back to the rinse station following her dive, she quizzed my husband & I on the length & depths of our safety stops (which WERE beyond the normal recommended stops), telling us, "you can never be too careful".
Admittedly, my husband & I have only been diving since 2008, but I have never met anyone like her before - only read/heard of them in documentaries. I have to ask - would this intrepid & fascinating woman be considered a "normal" advanced diver in certain parts of the world (other than in women pearl & sponge diving communities)? I would guess her to be somewhere around 68-70 yrs old. She said to me, "diving is my life".
Admittedly, my husband & I have only been diving since 2008, but I have never met anyone like her before - only read/heard of them in documentaries. I have to ask - would this intrepid & fascinating woman be considered a "normal" advanced diver in certain parts of the world (other than in women pearl & sponge diving communities)? I would guess her to be somewhere around 68-70 yrs old. She said to me, "diving is my life".