Tasting Flight – a learn to skydive doco

Follow seven friends as they travel to Jurien Bay, Western Australia from different locations around the world to start & continue their journey into the world of Skydiving. Share & be inspired by their experience and we dare you to get your skydiving ticket and learn to skydive solo. AFF courses running March – October every year.

Tasting Flight – a learning to skydive documentary from Skydive Jurien Bay on Vimeo.

Transcript

Greg: My name’s Greg. I actually live up in Singapore, and I’m down here in Jurien Bay to have a couple of fun jumps skydiving. I came down with a couple of mates.It’s been a while since my last skydive, about three months. But I had a few mates up in Singapore. I finally convinced them that it was a good idea to throw themselves out of a plane and here we are.

Martin: My name’s Martin. I flew into Jurien Bay from Singapore where I’m a farmer, of all things. I went up there with a big group of guys and got into this because of a good friend of mine named Greg who’s a big jumper here. And, yeah, it’s pretty awesome to get down here and to try this.

Johan: I had some friends that kind of did it before Greg, Dave, all you skydived before, and just couldn’t stop talking about it. So I thought I’d see for myself more than anything.

Stefan: A lot of snowboarding, a lot of white boarding, race cars, and ride motorbikes. So I guess I’ve always been after a little bit of a buzz. But I think skydiving is probably the thing that worried the parents the most when I started, but in a lot of ways it’s a hell of a lot safer than anything else I do.

Martin: It was always one of the things, especially when you’re a kid, you just think it’s almost a little bit too frightening, a little bit too extreme. I mean, I do a lot of extreme things, but skydiving has always been a little bit out of the box. But once Greg started getting into it and he started telling me a little bit more about what skydiving was and all the measures in place. You know, if you do it the right way it can actually be safe. I just thought, so I’ll give it a try.

The first day during the ack, it was a lot of information. I found it really, really hard to remember. And then just getting everything right and going through the drills, I guess, putting up with just having to go through all of that at the early stages. That was probably the hardest part. Actually jumping out of the plane wasn’t that hard, to begin with. It felt almost quite natural.

Stefan: To be honest, I found because, again, I was afraid of heights, I actually thought I’d be really nervous about being in a plane, but from that height you don’t really have that perspective of sort of where you are in the sky. And it’s really when you pitch your canopy that you go, “Wow, I am really high up.” And you kinda go, “All right, but I just came from 15,000 feet and now I’m at sort of four, so it’s not really high at the end of the day.” But like coming in under the canopy I think that’s probably my favorite part, and that’s probably the bit I most enjoy about the actual skydive because, you know, particularly here in Jurien, you’ve got the beautiful beach out to the coast. You’ve just got so much to look at. It’s a really, really nice thing to be under the canopy.

Coming into it, I was probably worried about gear malfunctions and the actual equipment you’re going to be using and what if my parachute fails. The training that you receive focuses a lot on building confidence in that gear. It teaches you how it operates, how it works, and by knowing more about the gear you can become a lot more comfortable with the fact that you do have a lot of things built into the gear.

Johan: You were talking about trust earlier. I think that’s the one that a lot of people have trouble with. You don’t just trust your instructor, you trust the person packing your chute. You trust the person flying the plane. And it’s not like do I trust you to go to the shop and buy me a chocolate bar, it’s do I trust you with everything.

Will: Words can’t explain. I’ve been going up in the air really. It’s lived up to everything I thought it would be so far.

Martin: Just jumping out the airplane is just, its far beyond what I think anyone would expect. I don’t think anybody jumps out expecting what it’s gonna be like. I think its, words can’t describe it put it that way.

Greg: When people ask me why do I skydive. I said, “Well until you’ve done one, you won’t understand why you skydive. Once you’ve been up there, once you’ve smelled what it smells like at 15,000 feet in the air, you really have a different appreciation for what you’re doing everyday.

Will: It was incredible. I can’t describe it because you really have to do it to understand, but all the experiences and everything rushing up towards you and everything happening at that one moment time slows down a bit.

Martin: You learn a lot of life lessons, I reckon, after you start skydiving. It’s a leap of faith and it’s a lot of trust in others and your gear and yourself. That’s been massively translated, like I run my own business as well and me being able to translate at that level of commitment to something’s that scary and unknown has just paid off a lot.

Greg: I mean, it’s pretty funny because I think this is the third group of people that I’ve brought back here to Jurien to learn to skydive. I mean, the reason I keep coming back here is because I tell them it’s the best place to learn. The experience that I get here, even not learning to skydive, but just from being able to jump on a daily basis with the people that work here. You pick up so much knowledge from that. You now, the people here are really, really welcoming when you come in.

Martin: Can I swear? It’s unbelievable. So unbelievable. We came down and all I’ve wanted to do was get back up my first jump.

Greg: I mean, that’s the only place I recommend people to come and jump now because if they’re coming I’m going to be coming with them. So it’s definitely gonna be the case.

Martin: Everything that we’ve managed to do here at Jurien Bay has just amazing. The instructors here, by a landslide, are the best. You feel like you’re part of the family as opposed to just a customer that comes here to jump. You’re looked after.

Johan: Even if you jump alone, it’s still a huge sport, put it that way. Everyone’s got their different roles, different positions. It’s not just a sport, it’s far more, like, a sensation when you jump out of a plane. There’s nothing else, nothing really matters, nothing, nothing back home, no stresses. You’re just there for that.