Getting there
Surface descent to the anchorages
How to arrive from the surface, what your first week looks like, and what to expect of your body.
If you are reading this, you have signed the standard manifest and you are aboard a tender. The descent will take longer than you think, because the descent is not the long part — the acclimation is.
The first week
Most arrivals from the surface land at the upper rib of Varangurd, at eighty metres. This is technical-diving depth in real terms, but you are not diving; you are resident in a pressurised space at one atmosphere, joined to the water only through engineered locks. Your body does not know it is at depth. It is in a corridor with a low ceiling.
You will, for the first week:
- sleep too much
- not eat enough
- find the lights wrong
- find the quiet wrong
These are normal. They pass.
What not to do
Do not attempt to descend further than your manifest allows in your first month. The depth tiers are not bureaucratic. They are physical. Read the safety page before you do anything that involves a lock.