27 women boogie over Sweden for a record

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 21

27 women boogie over Sweden for a record

By

JANE DUNBAR

Feeling tired and despondent? Had a hard day at work? If so, Kathy Basalaj, of Christchurch, has a solution — sky-diving. “If you’ve had a bad day, and then go sky-diving, you feel on top of the world. It renews all your energy,” she says. Kathy, aged 26, has been skydiving since she was 17. “I saw a parachutist coming down one day and it looked so good I just had to do it too.

"Going out the door is my favourite part The noise, the power of the plane, the group ready by the door, the count ‘ready, set, go,’ the jumping out into the air — it’s a great feeling.

“You look across at other people’s faces and you know what they’re thinking. It’s the ultimate.”

Sky-diving is a sport which should be treated with great respect, she says. "Like driving a car, it’s as safe as you make it. If you don’t stick to the rules, you’ll hurt yourself. “As long as you’re trained properly and do everything you’re supposed to, then there’s no problem. “When you’re learning, you do have to have a positive attitude and be quite aggressive though, as you have to throw yourself out

of the aeroplane in a good hard arch. Once you’re more experienced, you can be more relaxed.”

In early June, Kathy was in Sweden, taking part in the “Hercules Boogie,” a biennial event attended by sky-divers from around the world. While there, she did a jump with 26 other women, and, in doing so, they broke the previous European women’s free-fall record of 20 people. “I’ve always wanted to jump from a Hercules, but it’s not something you often get the chance to do. It takes about 80 sky-divers, and you run out a big door at the back instead of jumping from the side.” She is keen to go back again for next year’s jump. Kathy thinks there is a good future for sky-diving in New Zealand, particularly with the recent innovation of tandemjumping.

“Only 20 minutes training is needed for a tandem-jump; you make it attached by a dual harness to an instructor. You both jump out into free-fall, and a drogue chute is thrown out to reduce you to the speed of one. The main parachute is then

deployed, and you both land under that. Everything is controlled by the instructor. “The whole thing is much easier, so people are more willing to try. In Sweden, an 86-year-old even did a tandem jump.” Kathy is a member of' the Christchurch Parachute School, and jumps most week-ends. When the weather is good, and she has the money, she will do up to five in a day. It is not a big club, “perhaps because of the one-and-a-half-hour drive to the drop zone at Pudding Hill.” It has six experienced jumpers.

“We’re trying to get a display team together, but you need to do a lot of practice jumps beforehand. There are four of us who are keen, and you can do some good things with that number, but it would be good to have more people.

"We did a display at Hagley Park a few months ago, and that went well.”

The public likes watching “canopy-relative work,” says Kathy. “You can do radical things with canopy-rel, and people get a thrill; for example, a stack of four (parachutes on top of each other) then breaking off into groups of two, and landing like that.”

Kathy first learned to sky-dive in Nelson, then worked there as an instructor.

She has never been up in the air with anyone who refused to jump at the last minute. Only once has anyone seemed to have last-minute doubts. “Men are the most scared, but when there’s a female jumpmaster, they put on a brave face. Women only sky-dive when they’ve really made their minds up to do it.” However scared people may be, however, Kathy says everyone who does it “loves it.” “Back on the ground they’re

just rapt, they’re over the moon. It’s so satisfying seeing people’s faces when they land.” Kathy enjoyed her own first jump, but it was hard going up for the second. “For the first jump you’re trained and psyched up and know what to do if something goes wrong. After that, though, you start to think about what can go wrong, and get really worried.” Kathy did not let it bother her too much. She did her second jump the next day. “I just really wanted to do it; it’s such a buzz.” She has now done more than 700 jumps.