I jumped off some bridges and cliffs as a teenager. (that was a long time ago)
Wear shoes or point your toes down when entering the water. Don’t land barefoot and flat footed
Keep your legs/feet together or your nads feel like they have been punched.
Jump so you are straight. I would windmill my arms to keep my body straight, then close to impact feet together, pointed down and IIRC hold nose with one hand or you get some pretty serious neti pot action
You risk rupturing your eardrums if you cannot equalize pressure at depth quickly. Such an injury at depth can result in profound disorientation. Sixty feet underwater is no place to lose track of which way is up.
My wife and I did our first and only similar jumps at a mere 30’ at Ricks Cafe in Negril Jamaica.
I wore my Teva “sport sandals”, the kind that wrap around the top of your foot and over your toes and also around your ankles. I rotated my arms like a boss during the ride and landed perfectly straight yet still lost both sandals as I hit the water. Toes pointed down and hands on my hips.
My wife landed on her ass, everybody shouted, “OOOOOOHHHHHHH”, and she was left with a giant nasty black and purple bruise across its entirety.
That was only 9.14 meters.
Be careful.
In addition to all of the above: you weigh 120 kilograms.
Unless you’re extremely tall, I presume you have some belly overhanging. From my experience, this could be very painful - you might get a nasty bruise, and the impact shockwave might transfer towards your diaphragm and lungs - you don’t want to get the wind knocked out of you. I would be extremely cautious.
I’ve also jumped off the cliff at Rick’s Cafe. First jump was in beautiful form, so I did it again. Second jump, not so great - I didn’t hit the water straight, my bikini top was ripped off and I had a spectacular bruise on my left butt cheek. I was 48.
Twice was enough! I can’t imagine jumping three times that height.
Do you mean “may end up in a bucket” list?
I have been coasteering a few times, and high jumps into the water are pretty common. The highest one I’ve done was in Guernsey which was around 40ft (12 metres). Jumping from that height didn’t even really feel like much of an impact, so I should think adding 50% to the height should be OK if you do it properly.
FWIW the advice from the coasteering guides is to go in feet-first, with legs together and arms crossed over your chest, with one hand covering your nose. We were wearing wetsuits and old trainers/sneakers.
Crossing your arms is important, otherwise you risk dislocating your shoulders.
Or perhaps I should say might be OK.
Based on this calculator, going up from 12 metres to 18 metres only increases the impact speed from 15.3 to 18.8 m/s, although of course energy is proportional to speed squared so that does still represent a 50% increase in impact energy, as you would expect from a 50% increase in height.
Growing up in Indiana, we had many abandoned quarries nearby.
When mom was at work, my sisters were obligated to drag me along if they went anywhere, so when their boyfriends took them to the quarry, I went along.
Jumping in from various heights was half the fun. The water was clear, still, and deep.
And, as the whole area was cleared of trees for a distance, the sun would warm the water all day long. For about 12 feet.
We would jump feet first, arms crossed with shoes, and we would zip straight down 20 feet or more, easily. You could actually feel the barrier between warm and cold water zip up your body. It’s been 40 years, but I’d say the water temperature below 15 feet was 50 to 60 degrees. It’s not a polar plunge, but it does try to take your breath away.
We would spread our legs and arms just after impact to lessen the depth we’d go, because you just don’t want to be 40 feet down and have to swim up. There were a couple of times where I thought I just wouldn’t make it back up, even though I could see people up above me. The water was so clear, it was easy to misjudge your depth.
I was 10 years old when I did that. I went back when I was 22 and was stunned at the stupidity of what we did. If the 20yo boys could do it, I could do it. The high point we jumped from was easily 60 feet, and I remember a couple of boys jumping more. As I stood there on the edge, I just thought “no fucking way”.
No matter where you are geographically, the water temperature is going to drop significantly after 10-15 feet, to about 50 or 60 degrees. It will surprise you.
As suggested above, I think you may want to work up to that height at the local pool with a high dive so you have a better idea of what to expect.
And to point out the glaringly obvious, you’re not a kid anymore. We’ve all cheated death or injury a time or two as kids or young adults just by being more pliable and in better shape than we are now. Keep that in mind!
ETA: Just found this vidof high jumps. All are 2-3 seconds of fall. The seem to be ok. They also seem to be young!
Note to self: don’t open any more spoilers from Chacoguy.
Wusses! I dove off a roof, cleared 10 feet of concrete and went head first into the shallow end (3 feet) of the pool.
Yeah, that was dumb.
Should the OP also think about covering his or her nose? I would think that there would also be some danger in water shooting up the nostils too fast.
**Colphon **mentioned covering your nose in his post, but I never found it necessary. If you land correctly your head won’t be hitting the water - it’ll be entering the hole in the water made by your body.
Came here to say exactly this. I’ve been coasteering as well, but the highest jump I’ve done is about 8m (25 feet). That was a reasonable impact, and the advice I was given was to slightly bend my knees and leave my legs slightly slack. Arms crossed across the chest. I was wearing light shoes, which certainly reduced the initial slap on the feet.
However, the second time I went a bit off-balance and entered with my legs spread slightly. This was a mistake. The whack on my balls was quite significant - I definitely wouldn’t want a 50% increase in that. So be careful about the family jewels.
This post triggered a really old memory of a scene in a Batman story. BM and Robin were high above water and their only recourse was to jump. They found some tires, and tied them with a length of rope to their ankles such that the tires would hang down below them and break the surface of the water. I always wondered if that would really work.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s essential, but I did anyway because I’m a wuss like that. I think it did help to stop water going up there - as much after you’re in the water as when you’re entering.
Sounds like a very bad idea to me - instead of your feet breaking the surface of the water they risk slamming into a big solid tyre instead as it slows down.
This whole idea of having to “break the surface tension” is a big myth, as far as I’m aware. The problem isn’t in some magical “skin” on the water, it’s that water is fairly incompressible and viscous compared to air. Even if the tyre pushes some water out of the way, there’s still then a tyre in the way of where your feet need to go!
Agreed, the advantage of dropping something in is that it can create compressible air bubbles which cushion the blow, as mentioned above. It has nothing to do with surface tension. But it’s a common fallacy - even this article on olympic diving mentions surface tension.
I don’t see how a tire would help - whatever you drop needs to penetrate the water quickly to create bubbles. A tire would smack into the water and stay fairly shallow, followed closely by Batman smacking into the tire.
There was a previous threadabout that. I think they also did a Mythbusters show that said the same thing as Colophon did but I can’t search for that right now.
As kids we had a great place to jump from. We could work our way up to learn. I was about 12 when we got this lake property.
My baby sister was 5 when she went off the highest point which was 60 feet.
Some of the best fun was when we would see some folks coming by just looking at the cabins, cliffs, etc, with life vests on, sun shade hats and other indications of being new to boating.
One of my little sisters, yeah, had a bunch, & I would got racing towards the cliff with me chasing her with a good sized stick screaming I was going to kill her & and she was in full flight screaming in terror. Of course we both went off the cliff & would take out time getting back up.
That was really mean, but it sure was fun.
We seldom went deep for we soon learned that if we timed it right, after we were below the surface, we could bring our feet * legs fwd and bend at the waist and we could sometimes, if we did it just so, shoot back to the surface.
We never just held form to see how deep we would go, made it a long way to the surface. The instant we were in the water, arms & legs would b working to stop the descent. Water was 45’ deep there and we never hit bottom except for once I did as I was the largest and was trying to do it
This was dirty river / lake water and on the best of times you could see maybe 3 feet through it. We took a lot of precautions to be sure we would not jump into anyone & that the area was free of sinkers or old 55 Gal. barrels floating just below the surface.
Need to remember we did this for 3 months each summer plus weekends during the school year when we would go back up for the weekend and well into cool weather or be pushing the weather & water temp in the Spring. Of course being that young, we were all rawhide & rubber. I’m 70 & can still do it, make the jump OK that is.
Feet first, toes pointed, legs together, arms at my side with fists or in tight but bent so my fists were up near my ears.
7 kids & only one of us ever had to hold their nose and she got over that very quickly.
Fond memories…
Hmmmm. My uncle jumped off Hunua Falls when he was a kid. (30m 14 deaths historically) But he always was reckless and stupid.
A favourite waterhole I used to visit in my 30s had nice jumping sites at 2m, 4m, 5m, 6m, 8m and 10m. Brilliant for working your way up. The problem was that the water under the 10 metre jump was only just over two metres deep. It was a tad uncomfortable. I would dive head first from the 8m point to the same spot, but I really had to watch my entry to make sure that I didn’t shred myself on the bottom.
IMO, at around 10 metres you really begin to feel the water surface on entry. A less than perfect entry can put a lot of force on the body and can be quite uncomfortable. I haven’t done many jumps higher than 10 metres. I don’t enjoy it – too much concentration to make sure everything goes right. OTOH, less than 10 metres can be a blast!
Others have said it, but be careful.