The easy way to go from 0 - 200mph

Yesterday Sarah and I jumped out of a perfectly good plane at 13,000 feet. The plane wasn’t going to crash, in fact it landed safely shortly afterwards. Fortunately for us we were each strapped to a professional sky-diving instructor, who was in turn attached to a parachute.

After a couple of tumbles we straightened up, arms out, legs back and head up, it was only a split second before we were travelling at 120mph. At that speed it should have taken us 45 seconds of freefall to reach 5,000 feet where the chute was deployed. I can tell you though there was no way we fell for that long, we were plummeting much faster than 120mph. I’d say our free fall lasted no longer than 30 seconds which meant we would have been pushing 200mph. The rip cord was pulled at 5,000 feet and we decelerated sharply; with the parachute open we sailed comfortably down to the landing site, making a few turns, enjoying the view and having a brief chat. My instructor, who had been jumping for 26 years, landed us gently and I envied him for the fact that he went off to get someone else strapped to him to do it all again!

My suspicions over the speed of my descent were certainly confirmed when, despite being the last one out of the plane, I was the second one to land. It seems I might be pushing the maximum weight of 95kg for a skydiver, so I had better lay off the pies a bit. For both Sarah and I this was the most exhilarating experience I have ever had, we were both on a high for the rest of the day and I am still getting a buzz writing about it now.

I will definitely do this again, next time I’m flying solo.