My wife Shelly and I run a small Drop Zone, sky dive Key West, just outside of Key West, Florida. My name is Christian, I do the tandem sky diving and my wife does the video jumps. Our daughter Skylar was born 12-22-98 and ever since, she has been the center
of our lives.

Both of us being passionate skydivers with over 10.000 Florida sky diving jumps between us, it was a natural desire to take Skylar up with us on a sky diving jump as soon as we felt she was ready for a Florida sky diving experience.

We agreed on that fact, that we wanted her to ask for it, rather then being
pushed into it at all. We also felt that we could prepare her for her jump by
slowly introducing several somewhat related things to her.
Since my wife is a pilot, we had taken Skylar up in a Cessna 172 to fly
around Key West when she was as little as four days old. In fact, I kept a
little log book on her flights, and she now has about 50 hours in single
engine aircraft and helicopters. So we were very confident, that the flying
part of our adventure would come very natural to Skylar.
But we also tried to do other things like driving convertibles to get her
used to the wind; we took her to vertical windtunnels, where she didn't fly
herself but where she got to experience the wind and a similar noise level
then in an aircraft.

We've have always included her in everything we did, so she was used to the
'tandem' type attachment; I have rollerbladed and skied with her in a harness
in front of me ever since she was a few months old.
The most important part in the preparation though, was to take her
parasailing tandem repeatedly, which is very similar to at least the canopy
ride. The months before her jump we went parasailing numerous times and she
was always very comfortable with it and asked to go again.

Skylar was raised at the sky dive Key West Drop Zone; we had a friend watch her when we were skydiving, so she has been around sky diving literally all of her young life and has shown great interest in watching the freefall Florida sky diving videos, especially in the past year. She must have seen a couple thousand jumps on TV by now.

On 7-11-01 after 18 years, the FAA finally recognized tandem sky diving by
including it in the federal aviation regulations. There is no reference to a
minimum age of the tandem passenger anymore, so the eleventh of July would be
the first day where we could legally take Skylar up on her first sky dive Key West jump.

We felt that Skylar was well prepared, she expressed that she wanted to go
with us and we were confident that she was ready.
When we got up in the morning of the 11th, it wasn't a perfect day; it was
overcast and we decided to wait for a better day - everything had to be just
perfect. Just because the 11th of July was the first day that we could
legally jump with our daughter, it was certainly not the last and so we put
it off to an unspecified time in the future.

A few days later, I learned that a Dutch tandem instructor by the name of
Herman Landsman had made a jump with his 2 ½ year-old daughter Demie.
Let me briefly explain our motivation to go sky diving with Skylar. My first thought
was, that if I was going to get run over by a car tomorrow and would never be
able to skydive again, I would always regret not having jumped with my
daughter. My wife and I also felt strongly, that an experience like this
would greatly benefit our daughter's self esteem; when she is an adult,
she'll always feel how important she was to her parents and having been the
world's youngest skydiver, certainly wouldn't hurt her self-confidence.

So while the most important reason for the jump was Skylar, it was also a
nice vanity that she would be a world record holder. So I was a little upset
to learn about Demie's jump, but then decided to make the best of it. I
called Herman in the Netherlands, because who in the world would be able to
provide me with better information about sky diving with such a young child then
him?

Herman was very helpful and informative on the telephone. We spoke for about
40 minutes and I gained even more confidence about jumping with Skylar. I
also learned that Demie would turn three in September, which makes her three
months older then Skylar and would buy us some time, where Skylar could still
be the youngest jumper in the world.
In hindsight, I was happy for Demie, her mother Karina and Herman that I
hadn't jumped on 7-11. This way Demie at least held the world record at some
point, our daughter could then take it over and who knows who is going to
sky diving next, that's even younger then Skylar.

Anyway, after this unexpected event and the added information that I had
gotten from it, we were finally ready to do sky dive Key West on 7-21-01. I had made six
tandem sky diving jumps that day, the winds hadn't changed all day, they were light and
out of the south. My wife also felt good about the conditions and we made a
decision to go.

Skylar had tried on the harness that we had prepared for her at home a number
of times, so gearing up was pretty uneventful but of course Shelly and I were
slowly getting nervous, even though we had planned this day for such a long
time.
We had agreed on jumping from 8000 feet and I was going to deploy the drogue
after only a five second freefall and the canopy immediately thereafter. We
weren't sure of Skylar's reaction to the wind of 120 miles per hour, so we
would take it easy on her first jump and then on future jumps increase the
freefall time. Shelly was to climb out before us in order to take pictures
and video the jump.

So we geared up and I hooked Skylar up before we even boarded the aircraft.
The way up to altitude was a walk in the park. We are so used to flying
together, we were talking, laughing, looking out the window.
All of a sudden it hit me at about 5000 feet - I got nervous! Having made
5500 Florida sky diving jumps to date, this was unquestionably the most important one of
my life. What if she wouldn't like it? But Skylar sat in my lap so relaxed, I
tried to hide my feelings, so that she wouldn't sense them.

When we opened the door, it was windy and noisy suddenly; Skylar didn't like
that at all and I had a doubt as of whether I wanted to go through with the
jump.

At this point, Shelly had already climbed out and could see our daughter's
face much better then I could.
She was waving at me to go, so I just moved into the open door.
We rolled out of the plane and what came next was just the most amazing
experience for me. Skylar relaxed instantly. My wife said later that she
could see it, too. I felt so good about everything, I decided to change the
plan: instead of opening the parachute right away, I kept on freefalling for
about 20 seconds. We later regretted only having gone to 8000 feet. Next time
we would certainly go higher for Skylar to have a longer freefall and sky diving experience.

Skylar sensed that something was different when I opened the parachute and
tensed up for just a couple of seconds. It was absolutely beautiful and
amazing to me, that she then relaxed immediately when the canopy was open.
When we had gone parasailing together, she had always been a bit tense when
we launched, but mellowed out about a minute into the ride. Here she was
comfortable instantly.

I pointed out her Mom's parachute which she had seen so many times from the
ground. I showed her Key West from the air, our house and other landmarks
that she was familiar with. Then I did a 360 degree turn and asked her where
she thought our house was. She had no trouble finding it. She gave me a kiss
and together we watched her Mom's landing.

I was a little apprehensive about our landing, but with her only weighing 32
pounds and a 5kts breeze, it turned out to be beautiful.
Shelly ran up to us and Skylar gave her a high five and a kiss.

Apart from opening the door, she was never upset. And think about it: most
any normal person is nervous when that door opens!

She now talks about her experience much like she talks about parasailing or
driving in a Jeep - it's something enjoyable to her that she would like to do
again. She wanted to jump again today, but it is raining, much to her dismay.
Shelly and I decided that we would like to take her up every year on her
birthday, but I'm not sure whether we can wait that long.

sky dive Key West-Click Here for More Information - Key West, FL
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