Sailors hold breath in name of safety
Reigning America’s Cup champs expand training
When Tom Slingsby, a tactician for Oracle Team USA, was asked to hold his breath under water in a swimming pool for as long as he could, he lasted 45 seconds before coming up for air.
Twenty-four hours later, after instruction and drills, he held his breath for four minutes when asked to repeat the exercise.
It might not seem like an important skill for Oracle sailors to develop since they’re working on high-tech yachts that fly on top of the water, but instruction in freediving is just another way they have prepared for any situation in the America’s Cup.
Working with diving instructors hired by Red Bull, Oracle’s sailing team participated in an intense three-day course in Bermuda in August. There was an emphasis on safety, and the course was also an exercise in team building. The sailors spent hours in the classroom learning technique, theory and safety before trying breath-holds in a swimming pool and then while diving into the Bermuda Sound.
“It was an amazing experience,” said Slingsby, a 32-yearold sailor from Australia who was part of the Oracle crew that won the America’s Cup in 2013. “The biggest thing to me is safety; if we get under the net, you have to control your composure and be able to get out of there alive. That was a huge eye-opener for me. And now I’m so much more confident that if I did get in a tough position, I’ll be OK. I think all of our team are like that. But on top of that, it was so much fun diving down to 40 meters of depth and all the guys learning what the body is capable of with the right training.”
Kirk Krack, founder of Performance Freediving International based in British Columbia, began developing programs for freediving education in 2000. “In the classroom, we’re basically giving them the education and the element of what is breath-holding,” he said. “What is the physiology? Why do you get the urge to breathe? How does the body change and adapt itself? What are emergency breath-holds?
“What we really go into is the safety and problem management because we want to leave them with skills they can practice. There’s an element of risk and danger in everything we do within the water.”
Sailors are acutely aware of the inherent risks of their sport. The America’s Cup Class boat the Oracle team is racing is nearly 50 feet long with a wing height of about 78 feet. The boat’s hulls lift out of the water on hydrofoils, allowing the boat to fly across the surface of the water at speeds of up to 60 mph.
Sailors occasionally slip off the boat and are thrown into the water. Cooper Dressler, a grinder for Oracle, estimated that perhaps once a month a sailor from one of the six America’s Cup teams falls overboard. Oracle capsized twice in the two months leading up to the America’s Cup. Fortunately no one was injured.
For sailors such as Louis Sinclair, 25, the knowledge and skills gained during the diving course have clear implications for his job as an Oracle grinder. If the boat capsized and a sailor was pinned underneath, he would have an air canister to help him breathe, Sinclair said. As part of safety protocol, all of the teams’ crews carry an air canister when they’re sailing in the high-speed yachts. In the chase boat following them, there’s a diver, who is ready to rescue sailors thrown overboard, and a doctor.
Sailors also wear helmets to prevent head injuries and carry knives to cut ropes or netting should they get tangled up.
Krack, who has a sailing background, taught the course with those kinds of potentially dangerous scenarios in mind.
“I can appreciate the sport and the America’s Cup, but I can also appreciate the hazard, especially at the speeds that they’re moving at with all the rigging,” he said. “They’re taking sailing to the edge at this point, trying to maximize everything they can out of the boat and the crew.”
Part of the course also had a psychological component, during which instructors worked with the sailors on visualization and taught what Krack described as a guided thought process to help them eliminate doubt or fear that might creep in when holding their breath under water for four or five minutes.
During the course for Oracle last summer, Dressler said he got to the point that could hold his breath for more than five minutes while in static apnea, which is holding your breath under water in a pool while staying still.
When diving in the ocean, Dressler and a few of his teammates reached the maximum depth that the course allows, about 135 feet.
“You learn proper techniques, you learn how to do it safely,” he said. “You really gain an immense amount of confidence. If you’re that confident in something that you’re doing as well as your ability because you’re learning and grasping everything, nervousness doesn’t really come into play. What was so cool about that course was you learn absolute truths about what you’re capable of. It blew my mind as to how much we can really push ourselves further than we think we can, and I think it translates into all kinds of things.”