South African diver Verna van Shaik claims a new women's depth record with a reported 221m dive at Boesmansgat cave, South Africa.

34-year-old Verna van Schaik successfully completed the dive on Monday 25 October, beating the previous women's depth record of 211m, held by Italian Claudia Serpieri.

She took just 12 minutes to reach 221m, and completed five and a half hours of decompression. A full expedition diary has been posted on her website, Xtreme Dream, including her account of the dive.

"I left my travel gas at 35m on time and started the final descent. A bit slow I must admit. Remarkably I felt totally calm...
"My plan was relatively simple. I would go in on a side stage to save my back gas for the deepest part of the descent. I thought that this would take me to 150m but to my surprise, at 185m I still had over half the side stage left to breathe...
"Before I knew it I was past 200m, then 212m and then, as my gauges started to near 220m, I saw the tag. It was not the easiest thing to remove I have to admit. HPNS (High pressure nervous syndrome) had kicked in resulting in a minor shake (more like I was cold or nervous) which meant it took a couple of seconds to get my hands back under control."

Boesmansgat cave in the Northern Cape is an altitude dive, forcing divers to adopt longer decompression profiles to compensate for the lower atmospheric pressure. All equipment used has to be carried into the cave - and out again, a tough challenge for technical diving expeditions.

More links of interest
Extreme Dream, Verna's website
Wits Underwater Club website, University of the Witwatersrand


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