SCUBA Danger - Seriously Tanked

 Treasure diving had always held my fascination since I was a kid. Mike Nelson and his flaming magnesium underwater torch was the coolest; finding treasure, beautiful women, and still fight the bad guys deep in the depths! Luckily, my father was an avid diver, making his own gear before most of it was available commercially. Made his own wetsuit, bought a dual-tank set-up and he was off. I made the mistake once, during elementary school, when we were planning a bring your father to class event, of telling them my father was a scuba diver. This was like in 1960, when diving was not all that common. 

When Dad brought his tanks and gear in the day of our class, unknown to me, the subject was so interesting the teachers at the entire school got together and made it an all-school event in the school auditorium! Dad was expecting a short talk in a 20-student classroom, but instead found himself staring down a 650 sized student body, along with 20 or 30 teachers! I can still remember him, in his blue business suit, hefting the tanks on his back and the mask on his face while he explained in detail the use of all the gear. You would have thought he was a celebrated astronaut, and this was before astronauts! Afterward he was surrounded by interested teachers asking further questions. 

I thought he was going to kill me when I got home, and I was ready to explain that I had no idea they were going to do that, but he was still basking in the adulation of the 650-plus audience, so I escaped wrath of any kind. I was also the one tasked with bringing over 650 "thank you" notes home for him to read. One was mine. It read "Thanks Dad!" which my teacher chewed me out about, saying I showed no creativity in the note. I listened to all this and thought "Jeez, I see him every day, and I am still apologizing for what you and your ilk did without my knowledge!" 

Dad ended up teaching me to dive and also enrolled me in a NAUI scuba class at 14. I finally got my dive card, but not until NAUI had tortured me a few times diving in zero visibility water, tasked to navigate underwater with a compass, and how to change tanks underwater, or remove them completely. That last maneuver actually saved my life once, while I was doing an underwater hull-cleaning on a large yacht parked up against a seawall. 

I had gone under the boat and come up on the seawall side. I started cleaning the hull and was not particularly being very observant, when I suddenly noticed the tide was going out and the boat was settling on me. There was a slight concrete lip at the bottom of the seawall, not very wide, but my escape was blocked by this, and the curve of the hull was closing my escape upward to the surface. There was a large post at either end, near the bow and the stern so I could not get out that way. My tanks would never fit, and neither would I with or without the tanks! I suddenly realized I was going to drown.

trapped underwater in a confined space

 

My route back down under the boat was just barely wide enough for me to get through without the tanks. To make matters worse, passing boat traffic was making the hull ride up and down, creating sort of a continuous guillotine effect between the hull and concrete ledge. I'd have to time this well or be cut in half by a 25-ton boat! Either drown or be crushed. In the confined area I was in, I still managed to remember my NAUI training, and get the tanks and BC off, still breathing off the regulator. I braced my flippered feet against the seawall behind me, watched the hull coming up past the ledge, held my breath and PUSHED! I shot down between the yacht and the ledge and seemingly forever, surfaced on the other side.

My other buddies who had been working on the other side were astounded when I told them what had happened. I later showed them what had turned out to be a confined space, that none of us had recognized as such. You couldn't even call for help, because you could not surface by that time. Once again science, technology, training, keeping a cool head and working the problem saved me from certain death. Probably in a parallel universe I wasn't that lucky.