Three Grahamstown adrenaline junkies are still feeding off the high they experienced earlier this month at the skydiving Summerfest in Chicago, USA.
Three Grahamstown adrenaline junkies are still feeding off the high they experienced earlier this month at the skydiving Summerfest in Chicago, USA.
Brothers James and John Williamson and their friend Joos Vos attended the 11th annual American skydiving festival that marks the biggest gathering of sky divers in the world. Over 10 days the three had the opportunity to jump out of superior planes with the best teams in the world and take part in various formation jumps.
While Vos said he attended the festival just for fun, the Williamson brothers had some objectives to accomplish and as James said: “Doing an eight-way formation out of two Twin Otter planes from 15 000 feet was epic!”
The addicted-to-being-airborne brothers managed to pull off an amazing 70 jumps during Summerfest. “It’s all building experience towards a bigger goal,” James said. That goal is to break the South African record of a free fall at 14 000ft involving 22 people.
But since James is the co-owner of the Eastern Province Sky Diving Club in Grahamstown, with Vos, he hopes to rally together enough South African jumpers for the record. “We want to get 40 free-fallers docking together at 14 000ft,” he said.
The South African record is not the only one up in the air; at Summerfest 138 jumpers clung together while free-falling in order to break the Vertical Down World Record of 109 jumpers set at the Summerfest of 2009.
But skydiving in formation with others is a precarious venture: “You have to know how to break away from the formation in order to open your parachute,” James said. All this happens at approximately 200km/h. However, skydivers like James are trained to avoid accidents and “there are no close calls,” he said.
“Stick to what you have been trained to do and it’s a very safe sport.” Next on the horizon for the trio is a “hop and pop” weekend in October, organised by the Parachute Association of South Africa. Here sports skydivers are invited to be a part of a team jump and short free-fall.
