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by Jorg Jansen

Orca Free Wetsuit

October 19, 2009 in Equipment by Jorg Jansen

orca_free_1William Trubridge reveals that Orca will finally come out with a real freediving wetsuit. Orca freediving wetsuits are normally made for triathlons and misused by freedivers for their own work. But now Orca has decided to finetune the Orca specs to deliver a perfect freediving wetsuit.

The suit will be publicly available from January 2010 and William is already very happy with the current performance:

During DNF trials I was able to complete laps of a 25m pool with 2.5 relaxed strokes, and still maintain a speed of 1.0m/s.  This suit performs, and the clever inner back panel means that you are warmer than one-piece wetsuits twice its thickness.

Now I am back in the Bahamas, and have starting depth training in the lead-up to the AIDA freediving world championships.  Already I have cut 2 ascent strokes off (in an 80m dive) from what I was doing at this time last year.

There will be a limited number of suits available for some world championships athletes that compete during the Bahamas competition in November. Read the complete report for details. Or go to Orca’s dedicated freediving page.

On a historic note: When I came back from the Nice 2000 world championships with the Dutch team I bought a triathlon magazine at Nice airport. Immediately when we came back in the Netherlands I contacted Orca and asked for some sponsorship for Ibizia 2001 for the Dutch team. So I think we were the first national team to go all Orca during a world championship. I guess we did some early pioneering with them back in the days…

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by Jorg Jansen

New Freediving Computers

October 11, 2007 in Equipment by Jorg Jansen

President of AIDA International, Bill Stromberg, reports that there will soon be a few new freediving computers on the market. They will be showed at DEMA but it’s unknown when they will hit the shelves.

nemo.jpgMARES will come out with a new freediving computer, the first one since the legend Apneist. The new model is called Nemo Apneist and will not only be good looking but also have smart software. How smart is something we will explore later, but we could hope it will have the same boom around freedivers as they had when they released the Apneist back in 1998.

suunto_d3.jpgSUUNTO will always be close to us freedivers. This far it’s more or less because of the famous D3, a computer that you now can get for 170 euro’s or less if you digging a little. Suunto had some small problems with lemons’ here, but the D3 is cheap and it does the job down to 99 meter. NOW at DEMA 2007 Suunto will release the new D4, a computer that will mainly replays the Mosquito (?), but though I have tested the software I think it will replays the D3 as well. The case is brand new, and the software is better than ever. They have a new depth sensor that is not only surprisingly quick, it is also very accurate. The D4 will also contain a superb Scuba computer that even covers Nitrox, of course.

uwatec_galilelo_sol.jpgUWATEC should have their freedive version of the Galileo ready by now, a sophisticated computer that also includes a heart rate monitor. No further information at this moment.

As soon as there is any more information about these devices you will read it here!

(To be sure: the attached pictures are the older models described in this article. So first the Mares Nemo, then the Suunto D3 and lastly the Uwatec Galileo)

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by Jorg Jansen

Collection Of Weird Fins

August 22, 2007 in Equipment, Website of the week by Jorg Jansen

c4_high.jpgI already mentioned this website before, but it keeps so much fun to look at all these kind of different weird fins that I will mention it again. Ivo (aka Trux) has collected really the strangest collection of fins in the world. I even got inspired to be creative myself and designed a special stylish woman fin, as you can see on the left! ;)

There are pictures of so many different styles of fins that you sometimes wonder what kind of pill the inventor took while he was thinking about the design. Strangely enough some of them are working pretty well. But then again, not well enough to make them a mainstream product. Enjoy the collection!

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