EY Sailing - Thematic Sailing in Greece

Description

Skandalopetra is an ancient Greek tool which helps freediving and consists only of a piece of marble with a hydrodynamic shape. At the stern (back) part, there is a hole on which a rope is attached, which is longer than the depth that diver will dive to. An assistant ("kolaouzos") who controls the rope during descend is important and necessary. Skandalopetra is the only free diving discipline which requires assistance from another person (CMAS discipline).

Diving

The diver descends holding the skandalopetra in order to help her/him; the marble pulls the diver to the depth (similar to variable weight dives) while the assistant from the boat feeds in with the rope. When the diver wants to ascend and come back to the surface, informs the assistant "kolaouzos" by pulling the rope up; this way the assistant pulls the diver up who holds the rope and stands on the skandalopetra (you imagine that there is real necessity of the assistant!)

History

Even if we can find samples of Ancient Greek pottery from 5th centure BC which depict divers with skandalopetra, we believe that its starting points are the anchors of Ancient Greek ships. It makes sense to think that the first freedivers must have been sailors who used one of the many anchors aboard, in order to dive either for clearing their own anchors or for bringing things back from other shipwrecks. This means that the history of freedivng is almost identical to that of shipping and navigation, which means a history of thousands of years.. You can have a look at the similarity between skandalopetra and an ancient anchor from the Mycenean times!

Skandalopetra provided also great help to freedivers for collection of sponges from the sea but also for other underwater activities like anchoring and shipwrecks. This technique was abandoned in the late 19th century when the diving helmet came ("skafandro") to Greece and especially in Kalimnos, a traditionally sponge-diving island. Eventually, this discipline has come back to competitive freediving (CMAS), with freediving competitions in Greece.

Skandalopetra with EY Sailing!

During some of our trips we will revive this ancient freediving technique at depths that everyone will be comfortable and only under the supervision of our instructors! More details can be found in the information brochures of the trips "Freediving Adventure with Freedive Greece" and "Freediving Liveaboard training camp with Robert Woltmann"!