Das Boot and the Undersea Adventure

 
The sun beat down oppressively as I shifted myself into a slightly shaded covered part of the boat.  Sea swells of three feet tossed the craft from side to side in a rocking motion more akin to a once balanced rocker trying to navigate a boulder placed under one side.   Rhythmic motion was replaced by a jostled frenzy.  I pulled a black hood over my head that when stretched to its full extent, left only a small circle of skin exposing my mouth, nose, and eyes.  A little more coverage and I would have appeared as nondescript, as a Muslim woman wearing a full Hijab.  I could feel my skin trying to sweat yet the 5mm thick neoprene that covered my body refused to allow the droplets any space to form.   Nervously I checked and rechecked my air supply. "There was air there right?" I asked myself.  I mean I think I had turned the knob the right way.  I felt somewhat like a contortionist in a freak show as I clumsily reached down and did my best to secure my two fins.  With the feet of a drunken duck waddling down the road I slipped one arm and then the next into a black vest attached to heavy metal cylinder known by divers as the buoyancy control device.  For the rest of humanity it is a glorified life jacket with the ability to inflate and deflate as needed.

Around me sat my brethren, some with vastly more experience than myself.  They were people of all ages.  Each I addressed individually in my mind.  There were two gorgeous wash board ab perfectly tanned young males who readily kept their shirts off until the last minute.  Their general physic made others of us turn abashedly away when removing and replacing our own shirts.  One of them had a fireman's tattoo.  A beautiful young woman fawned over him and gave him a kiss.  Beside them was a middle aged couple exuding confidence.  The wife sat upright and seemed to drift off only fully waking to prepare herself.  Another couple beside us consisted of a Federal Marshal and his wife.  The later being a devout vegan and the former a cheating one.  I imagined him slipping into McDonald's like Peewee Herman sliding into a Times Square porno theater.  The woman experienced some sea sickness and sat trying to calm herself.  At least if she barfed on me it would be all vegetable I thought.

Gary Kelly in the back thankfully checking the air supply.

Across from us was a family consisting of an enormous father, a slightly plump wife, a young boy and two teenage girls.  All had the children had miserable frowns on their faces.  I don't think in three days I ever saw one smile.  The father seemed remarkably unfriendly as he barked orders to his small son.  I imagined that all three children were diving at the behest of their father fearful of the consequence should they not. The slightly plump wife did her best to be the family ambassador as the singular representative with a friendly and welcoming personality.  Another father, a large rotund, libertarian man barked responses as one of the dive guides tested peoples dive knowledge.  I later found him and his wife to be very friendly and engaging people with a teenage son who seemed to have little regard for anyone or anything around him. Then there was RJ,   a skinny black teenager my son's age who wore his suit like a pro.  He was on the trip to complete a more advanced level of certification.   He would dive to at least a 100 feet leaving us 30 footers looking like sissies in gym class.  Joining him was his non diving mom and father each filled with pride for their son. This was obvious in the lengths both went to be with him. The mom had sea legs and navigated the boat with ease the father, Rufus senior did not.   We were only 10 minutes out before he bolted to one side of the boat and began emitting the sounds of a man whose internal organs would soon emerge and become fish food.  Poor Rufus, just hearing him turned me a little green.  It was later said that it was even possible to hear his heaving under water.

Finally there was Gary and Sue.  Both were our original instructors and both had a level of experience and accomplishment that was the root of my sanity.  I honestly don't think I could have done it had they not been there.  For some reason both seemed to look at me and say, "don't worry, we won't let you die."  I wish I was rich, if I was I would take both of them away to the most beautiful dive spot in the world. I would do this because I can think of no one who would appreciate it as much as them.
 
As we made our final preparations Sue looked toward my son and I and asked if we wanted to follow her.  "Yes please." I responded sounding like a six year old begging his parents for a piece of candy.


Beside me sat my son who was preparing himself in a similar manner.  Turning toward each other we checked our straps and oxygen.  With the anchor down and the boat still pitching severely two rows of divers struggled to their feet and began to walk toward the rear of the boat.  I felt like the long forgotten and justly so, Howard the Duck.  Every shift of the boat sent the group cascading like trees in a hurricane force wind from one side to the other.

When we were learning to dive we were told that a dive boat can be a chaotic place.  It was an understatement as one of two captains I came to know barked out orders.  The first was an attractive tan man that must have fled the nine-to-five world at some point reveling in the non conformity safety of the Florida Keys.  He had the looks of a movie star and if I was gay I would most certainly swoon over him.  Kind of like George Clooney or Matt Damon with a tan.  (Opps, did I actually just write that?)  His first mate was a 19 to 20 year old equally tan and confident young man.  The other captain I call Hans.  I have no idea his real name but I loved him.  He was older with a thick German accent that accentuated every word he spoke.  "e vill be diving on ze Spanish Lady."   "Wow," I thought, "and here I thought we were diving on a reef."  I loved to laugh at my own perverse jokes.  I imagined he was a German U Boat Commander and I was a scared seaman heading off to a likely watery grave.    At his side was a young female deck hand that seemed to be living a dream  of a summer in paradise or at least one engaged in the perfect summer job.

The boat heaved back and forth as each diver made their way to the small platform at the rear.  As my turn arrived I secured my mask and put my regulator in my mouth.  The boat lurched as I stretched out my flipper clad foot and rather than entering like a seasoned explorer I did a swan dive with all the grace of an elephant dancing the Tango.

I honestly don't remember much of the first dive.  I think I was occupied with simply concentrating on my breathing and trying to remember everything I had learned.  Voices raced through my head.  My son and I kept looking at each other and I could sense his frustration as I would drift away trying to keep up with the pack.  Unfortunately I failed miserably at both tasks and when the dive came to an end I realized just how badly when I surfaced.  I broke the shimming plane that divides the deeply rich blue ocean with the biting air above it.  I wanted to appear as a seasoned diver but I fear I looked more like an epileptic having a seizure. I concentrated surface and tried desperately to cling to the yellow dive line trailing from the end of the boat.  The ocean continued to swell and with water crashing into my mouth and snorkel I felt like I was suffocating.  I wondered if somewhere in his demented mind Dick Cheney was laughing at me as I water boarded myself.

Before re-boarding the dive boat you had to remove your fins and hand them up.  I tried desperately to accomplish this and failed miserably.  I felt in peril as I struggled and a feeling of panic swept over me.  In my mind I kept trying to remember my instruction and use it to calm myself and rationally approach the situation.  Despite my rationality each successive mouth full of salt water felt more and more defeating.  From the boat the young tan man jumped into the water and effortlessly swam over to me.  Fill your vest he said to me and lean back.  I realized I had failed to put air in it when I surfaced.  For Christ sake, no wonder I was bobbing up and down like a buoy.   The man removed my fins and as the dive later descended into the water as the boat pitched I grabbed it and pulled myself up.  I stumbled back to my seat shaken.  Moments later my son was by my side looking equally distressed.  He had also forgotten to inflate his vest and dropped his regulator from his mouth.  In diver speak that means he had no air.  He tried to grab his secondary air supply and had struggled to release it.  "I was under the water pop, I felt like I was drowning."  He said his face filled with panic.  The young first mate had also helped him out of the water and I wondered if both of us owed our lives to him. 

We were both visibly shaken and in my moment of distress I did my best to overcome my own fear and comfort my son.  I could see that we were both questioning our desire to dive anymore.  Maybe it was just all wrong.  We were both dizzy and would have been barfing with Rufus had we not taken a sea sick pill before the dive.  We both took deep breaths and talked about what went wrong. I tried my best to shake it off and appear confident about the next dive. 

Sue Kelly

A short time later we had new air tanks attached and we were ready to submerge again.  Still shaken we joined the dive line and like paratroopers preparing to drop over enemy territory we stumbled forward and entered the water.

There is some invisible line when fear and self doubt surrender to confidence.  On that dive we both crossed it.  At times we held hands and continuously reassured each other that we were okay.  Increasingly we fingered the sign of a "C" for cool as we began to absorb the undersea world around us.  It was as if I was in a secret garden of life hidden away from the world.  With each breath I felt calm and peaceful as I watched fish move around me.  Each one seemed to recognize my clumsy nature as they watched curiously wondering why we were visiting their world.

Elephant Grace (Dustin Hoffman)

One dive merged into the next and the prized visions of grumpy moray eels peering out from their hiding places and stingrays flying through the water seemed to punctuate each experience.  Giant lobsters peeked out from hiding spots their front feelers brushed by the motion of our passing. Carefully I touched a waving fan of coral amazed at how alive it felt.  I wished everyone could understand the beauty of this life. It was a living world so close to ours filled with such vibrant diversity it made humanity look bland.

At one point we swam over the wreck of a Civil War era blockade runner that had been carrying a cargo of cement hidden in pickle barrels.  When the cement hit the water it transformed into barrel shaped forms. 

On one dive I found a piece of fan coral that had broken free and sat lifeless at the oceans bottom.  I lifted it upright and stacking rocks around it tried to give it a new chance to attach to a rock.  With giant mounds of brain coral hundreds of years old shadowing me I felt like an undersea gardener.  Sue spotted me and clapped giving me a pat on the head. 

After you dive something changes you.  I think it is like being a world traveler.  When you are exposed to different people and cultures your own never quite looks the same.

One day as we sat on the dive boat returning from a trip our instructor Gary told my son how impressed he was at his form and frog kicks.  He said he looked like a seasoned diver with hundreds of dives under his belt.  Noah beamed.  My little Jacques Cousteau was indeed a diver at heart.  It was a special time.  He is almost sixteen and when home he lives in his own world that consumes him.  So do I and there are times I feel like life is slipping by and I don't share the time with him I wish I did.  For three days and six dives we were together.  There were no distractions, no diversions.  We were simply a father and a son creating a memory that would last for our lifetimes.

While on land we passed by a couple of schlock shops.  One in particular was horrifying in a way only a diver could comprehend.  Dead coral sat on the shelves, skeletons of what they really were.  They were no longer the beautiful waving organisms of the ocean.  Barrels of dried starfish looked like the Auschwitz equivalent of the high seas.  A dried puffer fish hung in a bag.

I still eat seafood but I will never look at it quite the same.  I know now the world from which it came and perhaps someday I will have my ashes spread across the ocean and return my life to them. 

Key Largo and the Florida keys are nice but their worn tourist beach like atmosphere doesn't hold a candle to the life that surround them.

I seriously doubt I will ever find a Spanish doubloon or the lost necklace of a Spanish princess.  What I have found however is so much more valuable.  It is a sense of confidence and achievement.  It is exposure to a beautiful world and most importantly, it is a chance to spend a few hours with my son.