Below the surface: Why every sailor should learn to free dive and how to start

Commercial skipper Viveka Herzum explains how free diving skills can be good for your boat, your mind, and your budget, plus the dos and don't when you're just getting started.

For a sailor, free diving is far more than a sport or a pastime. It’s a key skill with clear practical, mental, and economic benefits. I learned them firsthand in my first working season.

We were anchored over deep water and a notoriously rocky seabed on the East end of Lampedusa. With the wind quickly rising and nightfall approaching, every boat was making for their home berth. We pulled up the transom ladder and got set to follow.

My skipper was calmly hauling anchor, motoring lightly into the wind, when the windlass ground to a halt.

Anchor fouled, and no amount of give and take could free it. We hadn’t set a tripping line.

In no time, she produced a pair of fins. Soon she was in the water, breathing up to dive 20m down, shackle in hand. Within minutes we were free and heading back to our mooring.

That same year, we docked next to another commercial skipper and avid free diver who would set out at dawn nearly every morning, spear gun and net bag in hand.

By the time his guests stirred, he would have a fresh-caught amberjack filleted, marinated, and ready for lunch, any trace of its guts long washed off the sides of the floating pontoon (the spoils usually went to other sailors; guests had plenty else to put between their teeth).

Handy, I remember thinking on both occasions.

I quickly learned that for both these skippers, diving was not just a recreational part of life on board, but a practical help, and that I needed that skill in my arsenal.

Whether you’re a liveaboard or a working sailor, here’s how free diving can make your life at sea safer and more enjoyable, plus a few tips to get you started.

What is free diving?

First things first: what is free diving, exactly?

Free diving, or ‘apnea,’ is the most basic and essential form of diving, not to mention the oldest. There’s no breathing equipment or external sources of air.

Though it’s now a sport and a competitive discipline, it’s something we do quite naturally. You’re technically free diving anytime you go underwater and resurface on a single breath.

Sport free diving is a more structured, deliberate version of this basic concept. It can be practiced with or without fins (I’m partial to the mono), but across the board training is all about managing air supply.

There are distinct disciplines like constant weight, variable weight, free immersion, static, and dynamic, but you don’t have to worry about all that if you’re just getting started.

Just focus on the basics of breathing up, breath hold, and equalisation.

There are plenty of resources online for understanding what’s happening in your body when you dive and how to dive safely to avoid blackout and hyperventilation, though nothing replaces getting in the water and observing your physical sensations.

Additionally, various certifications are available from recognised bodies like AIDA, SSI, CMAS, PADI, and Apnea Academy. Almost any reputable dive shop will offer free diving courses alongside their SCUBA programs.

Regardless of where you are in your training, the most important thing while free diving is to respect your body’s limits, prioritise proper technique, and always, always dive with a buddy– not for nothing, it’s free diving’s number one rule.

Why free diving is an essential skill for sailors

Sailors are famously reluctant swimmers. We tend to be too busy skimming over the surface of the water to think much about what’s down below.

Yet basic free diving skills are a must when you’re spending a good portion of your life on or around the water.

Whether it’s checking an anchor or un-snagging it, having an expanded diving range has saved my skin more than a few times.

It also gives you options.

Like that skilled skipper showed, anchoring over greater depth becomes less of a cause for concern when you have the option of freeing yourself from a rocky shelf by hand, or adding a tripping line shackle after the fact.

Even without diving deep, being comfortable in the water can take the stress out of some maintenance jobs and some emergency situations.

Whether it’s a fouled prop, a blocked water inlet, or a barnacle-encrusted hull and propeller, the stakes are instantly lower when you can do the job yourself.

You’ll save time, turmoil, and money in the long run if you don’t have to find dry work-arounds, or hire a diver.

A good skipper sailing in warmer regions should also know their territory inside-out and under.

Having localised knowledge of an area, its hidden pitfalls, and the types of seabed you’re dealing with can make navigating a coastline a whole lot safer. No chart marking or recommendation is more reliable than what you have been able to see firsthand.

For working skippers, fluency with the marine flora and fauna, hidden underpasses, cave entrances, fresh water outlets, and diveable wrecks also makes for a more enriching experience for your crew, whether it’s made of family, friends, or paying guests.

An additional skill can even turn into a selling point when running charters. With the number of sailing experiences on offer on the rise, many are turning to combo sailing-diving, sailing-kayaking, sailing-fishing, and sailing-climbing trips to stand out.

The free diving community

Free divers are the quintessential gente di mare, people of the sea, and have an unmatched connection to the water.

If they’ve been diving locally, they’re likely to have extra familiarity with the area’s coast and regular tides, currents, and conditions. There’s always much to be gained from consulting a diver for well-informed recommendations.

And divers are just like sailors– always keen to talk shop (even if they won’t share their secret fishing spots!).

While I’m not a spear-fisher myself, for many free divers the skill is a way to put food on the table.

It’s more affordable, not to mention sustainable, than buying your catch in town, and can prove to be a valuable provisioning resource in remote anchorages.

I’ve also found free diving to be an organic way of making friends at the pontoons. You might even find someone willing to take you on as a diving buddy.

Free diving to help out other sailors

Free diving skills can also make you useful to other members of the maritime community.

I’ve recovered lost sunglasses, dropped masks, and other personal items for guests, as well as picking up plenty of polluting debris.

When a 74-year-old solo navigator friend had a piece bounce off deck mid winch-service, getting it back to him was no problem. It was a good thing, too, as having a replacement shipped from the mainland could take weeks.

You’ll also be in a position to help out on those nightmarish, high-season days when the bays are tiled with boats and there’s a good chance of anchor chains crossing, a fluke wedging into a nasty crevice, or a chain slipping under a boulder.

I’ve been in this situation a handful of times, and it’s always rewarding to save another sailor some trouble, and spare your own vessel potential damage.

It doesn’t hurt, either, when being able to offer assistance leads to a good chat and free beer!

Mental benefits

Practical perks aside, a lot of the onboard benefits of free diving have less to do with the boat and more with your coping skills.

As many free divers will tell you, most of the sport is mental. It’s all about self control, and relaxation.

Being able to calm your nervous system and manage fear responses can prove just as useful when facing heavy weather conditions or unexpected situations at sea, particularly if you’re in a position of responsibility and need to do some quick problem solving. You’re no use to anyone if you’re panicking.

If you’re spending extended amounts of time onboard, you’re also likely living with several others in close quarters.

In a crowded environment, free diving can be a way to get some much-needed quiet and mental clarity. Even in the offseason, I’ve often used dry static tables to recenter.

What kit do you need to free dive?

One of the best parts of free diving is that you don’t have to worry about clunky, expensive compressors, warranties, technical malfunctions, or all that finicky kit you need for SCUBA.

However, having the right gear can be a huge help.

In my case, it changed the way I dive by making it safer. With the right kit, meant I could dive for longer and track my progress.

If you’re just starting out, you’ll probably have most of what you need on board already.

First and foremost, you’ll want an appropriate free diving mask (frameless will be more comfortable as you descend and the pressure increases); a pair of fins, and a diving buoy for safety, particularly if you’re anywhere near marine traffic, though it goes without saying that you shouldn’t be.

You may also want a depth gauge, dive watch or computer, or rope if you’re training, as well as a wetsuit if you’re spending longer in the water. It gets chilly as soon as you hit the teens.

If you’re diving with a wetsuit, you’ll also need a dive belt and weights, as the extra layer changes your buoyancy.

Personally, I’m happiest with the least amount of kit possible on me. There’s nothing like feeling the temperature change directly on your skin, and feeling like you’re touching everything in the world just by sharing its water.

My free diving journey

Disclaimer: my early free diving days are a classic do as I say, and not as I have done.

I had a pretty lax, DIY approach when I first started.

I had always been comfortable equalising and holding my breath and figured I was essentially just playing around in the water, seeing how deep I could get. I wasn’t thinking much about proper technique, or even my own safety.

I figured, what could go wrong?

It turns out, a lot. I’ve seen plenty of accidents getting helicoptered out since then.

If you’re diving with a buddy, proper technique, and respecting your body’s limits, free diving should be perfectly safe, but I still wouldn’t underestimate the value of proper preparation.

Read up on hyperventilation and the risk of blackout before you even get in the water. It’s good to have an idea of what signals your body can send you that things are not looking good, and how you might miss them.

I fixed my bad habit of diving alone pretty quickly (sorry, everyone), but it would have been much safer and simpler to start with proper training, or at the very least an experienced diving bud.

Alas, I was sailing for work without a first mate and had a lot of time to kill alone at anchor.

I made do with what I had onboard: a bathing suit, a basic mask from Cressi, and a monofin.

My pair was a hand-me-down silicone training pair from Decathlon, three sizes too big. (There were plenty of regular split fins on board, but if you were the kid tying their ankles with elastic hairbands to dolphin kick, you’re probably not reaching for those.)

I was instantly obsessed with the extra agility and propulsion a monofin gave me, and never mind the nasty blisters. I only discovered the joys of neoprene swim socks much later.

My depth gauge was the boat’s depth sounder, or whatever markers I could count on the anchor chain.

Thankfully, by the time I started diving deeper I had a spear-fisher friend to dive with and had done a bit more training.

I had also borrowed a basic diving watch from another skipper to track my depth– I still remember my elation the first time it marked past thirty!

As any diver will tell you, those first deeper plunges were a revelation.

Diving meant temporary access to another universe of light, colour, tiny wonders, and life, even when all over the Mediterranean there seems to be less and less of it. It was cool down there, and beautiful, and ever so quiet.

I was hooked.

Five metres down, the colours start to cool. You can see every piece of plankton, every chunk of jellyfish, floating freely through a blanket of blue. Long, dragging tentacles, alien shapes and chunks of bitten membrane. It’s like being inside the plasma of a cell, or a strangely populated atmosphere.

Fifteen, the yellows flicker out. Twenty and on and any memory of green is gone. You’re deep in a bucket of indigo and a buzzing calm. You have to be, or you’ll burn right through your air supply.

I could pick up (and put back!) pen shells, spot sea turtles and schools of barracudas; spend hours playing with octopus, learning to follow their traces.

I followed lungs of damselfish into underwater cathedrals made of black basalt; got inches from the all-too-trusting groupers that hide there; and watched schools of dreamfish wrap around me in a silvery cocoon.

But spending a lot of time in the waters of the Med also meant witnessing its gradual devastation.

Every year, I swam over shoals emptier than the season before.

The view from down below

Overall, free diving has made my life as sea safer and more social. It has given me a leg up on maintenance and some sticky anchoring situations, as well as an extra bank of submarine knowledge to draw on.

Over time, being both a sailor and a free diver has also made me a more mindful citizen of the sea, and helped me appreciate that living, working, and playing on the water comes with a degree of responsibility.

Its not a new refrain. Firsthand knowledge often plays an role in conservation; people tend to protect what they care about, and to care about what they know. I’m no exception.

But it’s thanks to free diving that even while I’m sailing, I never forget what’s happening below.

If you enjoyed this article about free diving….

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