Caribbean Cup Roatan Freediving Competition
The Caribbean Cup is held annually in Roatan and is one of the world’s leading freediving competitions. Learn more about this amazing sport from world champions in this amazing video filmed in Roatan.
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Each year the world’s leading Free Diving competitors travel to the pristine waters of the Western Caribbean, to participate in one of the sports premier events: The Caribbean Cup Roatan Free Diving Competition.
My name is William Trubridge and I’m the world record holder in unassisted Free Diving and World Champion Free Diver.
Freediving is the ancient practice of holding your breath for extended periods of time of swimming underwater. Divers have been doing it since the time of Plato.
Freediving allows you to experience the underwater world on its own terms. You’re free to move in three dimensions, go up and down, and move quickly and agilely. Your bubbles don’t scare away the fish. And also you feel like you’re becoming an aquatic creature yourself. You feel more integrated into the underwater world. That’s the foundation for my passion for the sport.
Since its beginning in 2013, the Caribbean Cup Roatan Free Diving Competition has become one of the most important Free Diving events in the world.
My name is Esteban Darhanpe, and I am the organizer of the Caribbean Cup Roatan Free Diving Competition. The first year it was very hard because when I’m starting to promote Free Diving and nobody knows what it is. First I have to explain to them what is Free Diving and then who cared about it, right?
We are going to do the first edition of the Caribbean Cup 2013.
Of all the islands in all the world, Roatan is uniquely suited for Free Diving.
Roatan is a unique island in the Caribbean and that it has, one side of the island with very sheer drop-offs to great depth, and the trade winds come from the other side, meaning that the deep side is very calm and very clear waters with very little current. So it’s ideal for Free Diving but also has a lot of other different attractions, that appeals to Free Divers. You can go shark diving, swimming with dolphins, the turtles. It has a very, well-managed marine park, that means that the coral reef systems are very well populated and the snorkeling here is amongst the best in the world.
Each day the participants in the Caribbean Cup Free Diving Competition are ferried out to a floating platform which is anchored in 800 feet of water just off Roatan’s West Bay Beach.
Each dive can last as long as four minutes and conserving oxygen is critical.
In the beginning of the descent you’re working to overcome your body’s buoyancy so your lungs are completely full and you have to swim hard to get down off the surface but as you descend your lungs compress and that means your body loses buoyancy so it becomes easier and easier to descend to the point where at around 15 meters you surpass your neutral buoyance and become negative which means you sink even if you don’t do anything. And at 25 meters they stop swimming and the rest of the descent is completely in what we call the freefall just motionless and allowing your gravity to pull you to the maximum depth.
At the designated depth, the light is dim and divers must find a plastic tag which they retrieve and return to the surface.
Here we are at the maximum negative point so your body is very heavy and you need to work very hard to reclaim the surface, in fact, the ascent is a lot more difficult than it seems because almost all the way up you are working to overcome your negative buoyancy. Not until the last few meters that your lungs we expand to the original volume and you can drift those last few meters to the surface.
The Caribbean Cup Roatan Free Diving Competition is many things to many people. For the divers, it’s a chance to push their limits. For the fans that come to watch, it’s an opportunity to hang out on one of the Caribbean’s most beautiful beaches and meet Free Divers from all over the world.
For everyone, it’s 8 days of fun and you’re invited to join the festivities next year. There are plenty of great inexpensive hotels and Roatan is just a 2-½ hour flight from Houston, Dallas, Atlanta & Miami. Come see for yourself what all the excitement is about!
I love Free Diving because I can be a true explorer, not only exploring the depths, exploring myself and connecting the natural environment with me. And it’s a beautiful sport, it’s a beautiful activity and it’s very safe. And then Free Diving, motivates you to be a more healthy person to do yoga, improve your breathing techniques. And this is good not only for Free Diving this is nice for everybody.
To learn more about Caribbean Cup Roatan Freediving Competition watch the video by clicking here
