Since then the tape and epoxy have dried out, crazed, cracked and decomposed from ultraviolet rays, sending pinhole jets of compressor exhaust into the air five, ten and fifteen feet prior to the twenty-foot end, allowing exhaust — and carbon monoxide — into the tanks, compressed for breathing at depth.
Ravid won’t spell out the stupidity, but Moeava gets the message. In other times, closer to home, a seasoned waterman might have lashed out: You worthless piece o’ dogfuck. Why don’t you eat shit and die? A window webbing would further ventilate frustrations over a near death experience. Who can help but take such a thing personally? As it is, far from home and needing a job — in a word, insecure — a seasoned waterman can only glare, because sometimes a man must overlook the small stuff.
Moeava shrugs. “Hey. Shit happens. You know that. Don’t you? From what I hear, you’re an expert.”
So the two men swallow their pride and slog through the basics of clean air compression, and the transfer of that air into tanks for breathing underwater without carbon monoxide tainting caused by the exhaust pipe spewing poison too near the intake. This detail of miniscule proportion and monumental consequence is as obvious and unforgiving as getting out of the road to avoid getting hit. Carbon monoxide is tasteless and worse: it can kill.
So the welds are cut and cleaned with the grinder and re-welded and covered with fiberglass roving, matt and again roving, with epoxy in three light coats between layers, and then covered with duct tape against the sunlight. The process is accompanied by many groans, so the lesson will sink in on the unlovely afternoon beginning their life together.
Moeava proves his salt by staying mum, copping to the mistake and keeping the lid on further blunders. His initial premise that shit happens is in fact true of life aboard, though it can only be an effective defense if used sparingly. Shit doesn’t have to happen. The fundamentals must be correct, and Moeava takes care that they are. He can prep and start the boat, steer the boat in both forward and reverse in all conditions, dock the boat, anchor the boat, fuel, service and clean the boat.
He does not own the boat — not to worry; he pays a debt on the boat to a man willing to entrust the boat on the basis of longstanding friendship with Moeava’s nana, Hereata, who stepped up a few months ago to facilitate her grandson’s success in something — anything would do — even as she chided him for his lack of courage, his lack of experience, his chronic weakness for parsley.
Ravid finds himself distracted by caution; he can’t very well trust the younger man’s work without checking it over: checking the engine oil, hull plugs, degree of tilt on the outdrive leg, lines, knots, thimbles, shackles, seizing, anchor, spare anchor — all the mundane tasks and functions a captain or dive leader should expect done correctly by capable crew.
Yet he can’t help but sympathize with Moeava’s struggle. He replays his first meeting with Hereata to see the method in her prowess, by which she recruited a real waterman to the cause of Moeava’s career advancement. Well, a fellow shouldn’t complain about landing the job he sorely needed to make ends meet. Still, it goes to show something or other. But what more would he have gained by knowing he was in the catbird seat all along? He’s captain after all, and the money will improve once they see what the little operation can generate. For all anyone knows, multiplying the two-tank fare times six, times three hundred and sixty-five, may be great. Well, multiplying by six times two hundred fifty days per year at any rate, with a full complement on the day after the monoxide debacle. The test was failed, but the captain, crew and dive leader have a living to make here and are open for business.
As the fates would have it, distraction continues with the meatball man of a few nights prior, who recognizes Ravid from fifty yards out. Either the guy is approaching with two-fisted intent, or he’s stuck with a chronic sourpuss — and bowed legs and a bad attitude. The full-figured Hereata walks alongside the first day’s divers, displayed to maximum advantage for the good of mankind, with the high heels, the push-em-up, the lift and spread and lusty potential for any man to imagine.
Her control of the evident situation demands that we all just get along. Bound for glory and maximum fun, her business smile brightens her stern command. “You will have a wonderful dive experience.”
Moeava sees that the big Russkie or Croat or former KGB agent is a problem. Stepping into the gap between adversaries, he grabs the muscular fellow’s dive bag and says, “Get on. We go already.”
Ravid stays apart, focusing on technical stuff, and on service and good cheer to the other passengers, most of whom are French. He picks a fellow whose English is adequate to translate for the rest on the where, depth, bottom time, buddies, hand signs, what might be seen or expected and the rest.
Naturally, this feels very different from his former billet, where he’d been on board for eight years and was highly regarded for local knowledge, sterling credentials, no casualties and a reference from the Crusty one himself. The introductory song and dance were fluid and joyful, with laughter and anticipation from the crowd. Now perfunctory and humorless as a Frenchman, he wings it on the details, and for laughs he finishes his banana and drops the peel on deck, pretending not to see it. He plans to step on it and pretend to barely avoid breaking his neck, because he thinks the frogs will appreciate such antics, because they do; I mean: Jerry Lewis. Come on.
But a well-mannered young man picks the peel up and flings it overboard, causing the rest to laugh like hyenas.
Well, this might take some time.
Ravid plays straight man, hopelessly looking overboard for his lost banana peel. The crowd goes mum, as if watching a stalker or pervert.
Ah, well.
Then it’s off to the pass, Ravid hoping it will be as he described, which it should be; since he only dove the first half that’s all he described. He doesn’t know what to expect, like the snaggle-tooth lemons coming in for a sniff, or the giant hammerheads cruising around the corner, or the Galapagos coming in for a taste.
The current is stronger than yesterday and worse yet, it sweeps around the corner into another current heading out. Currents this strong can’t be resisted, except by fools, and they tire soon enough. Assessing conditions is the fundamental first step for any diver at any site. The tourists assume the crew’s familiarity with a site and conditions, so they wonder why the lead guy is taking so long to sort things out. Is he stumped? Or worried? But he’s only being thorough, and if the guy who kind of understands English doesn’t get it all, that’s okay too.
“Spring tides run like hell. We didn’t anticipate this much current. Man oh man, it’s gonna be a sleigh ride.” Moeava puts the boat in neutral and awaits guidance. Ravid walks to the cockpit to say that they’ll dispense with the anchor today. For starters the current may be strong enough to keep it from grabbing. Besides that, they’ll do better if Moeava watches their bubbles and tags along. Ravid will keep them at fifty or sixty feet for forty-five or fifty minutes and come up with the boat right there. Okay?
Okay.
Ravid keeps Moeava eye to eye to check for doubts, till the big man blinks and turns away.
What the hell can he do? A little slack might turn into more slack, but you have no choice when you really need a little cash on a regular basis, beginning right now. So Ravid goes back to where the gear is staged, dons his rig more like a cat burglar on a race with sunrise than a Degas dancer and takes a pause on the cap rail to demonstrate the easiest technique, in case anyone is a certified scuba diver but never saw this one.
He waits while Moeava checks the divers to ensure their air is on, they haven’t forgotten their fins, their buoyancy compensators have enough air in them to float, they have weights, masks, no-fog and so on and so forth. It’s like checking for mittens, lunch money and nametags but worse. Ravid then tells the casual translator that they’ll all flip back into the water at once to better stay together. Once in the water — dans l’eau — they will descend immediately to minimize drift. He follows with a
brief charade and gets adequate nodding. Then he holds his mask in place with one hand and his reg in place with the other and falls back into the water. The group follows over the side with only a few kicks to heads. They regroup at the stern, share the okay sign all around, and down they go. Okay signals are repeated on the fly, and Ravid eases into the drift, signaling the others to follow close. He hopes that Moeava will see the bubbles and follow. He hears the engine, but the current is gaining, up to a knot and a half. He can’t slow down but feels certain that Moeava will speed up to keep up. Above all, he recognizes a situation requiring calmness in a dive leader.
The little troupe drifts along well enough, which is the case with a dramatic current, as long as nothing hangs up and no one needs to go back. A big hammerhead cruises by about forty feet out, which counts for a highlight and may qualify the dive to end on a happy high note with a once-in-a-lifetime sighting only ten minutes in. But Ravid fears repercussion and refund; such business hazards are known, whereas a fast current may have no hazards. So he takes the hand of a woman nearby and puts it in the hand of the next diver, signaling all the divers to join hands, which may mean very little in a surge but works for the moment in keeping the group together. So they wend along the bottom as it drops from sixty feet to seventy, which is outside the dive plan but still won’t require a safety stop, not for only a few minutes at that depth, and may offer significantly more safety in terms of things to hold on to, should the need arise.
Well, eighty feet on a sixty-foot dive plan is iffy judgment and ninety is what Crusty would call fucking with the phantom. But things level out at ninety, which seems to be below the fastest current, and bottom time at that depth might just squeeze into the three-minute limit that would make it a bounce — a bounce to experience the gang of fifteen-foot manta rays approaching in single file. The lone female leads twelve males in their orderly pursuit of manta love, as they swoop to within inches overhead, definitely securing the dive, all fares officially bankable on elapsed time and drama. Besides that, tips should peg the meter on a spectacular show — if this is a tipping group — not to mention word-of-mouth recommendation and referral leading to more business and the birth of a great reputation.
Should I tell the one about the four hours of work and the round of golf?
Do frogs tip? Is tipping de rigueur in the region?
I tipped at the buffet and hula show. And the bar...
Less than secure is the balance of the dive, now way off the plan at a depth that could only be assessed by computer and so requires conservative practices regarding a safety stop. Then again, conservative assessment can run afoul of plain common sense; like insisting on a safety stop to be extra careful in avoiding the bends, when a raging current could carry the whole lot out to sea. So what’s conservative now? Ravid assesses the few brief moments at ninety to ninety-five feet and determines that the safety stop might be waived, but not likely. He knows as his eyes focus on his computer that it will be flashing: 15 feet/3 minutes. Well, it’ll actually flash ten feet, but it’s a vintage unit built prior to recent “upgrades” in the dive tables, which aren’t upgrades at all but more conservative guidelines advised by the legal department of the dive association. So it’s out of habit developed over the last few years that Ravid reads ten feet as fifteen and holds it for three minutes, because ninety feet for twenty-one minutes is within the no-decompression limit, but they were down for twenty-five, which is only four minutes over but enough to bend a pretzel in a heartbeat, given the lack of backpressure to hold the nitrogen in place in the bloodstream where it belongs, till it can file out in an orderly progression.
But maintaining fifteen feet for three minutes might be dicey, given the goofballs and meatballs in the group and the accelerating current that must be two knots by now, which is faster than anyone can control and could make local knowledge incidental, if he had any local knowledge or knew someone who did, because Moeava is apparently local without the knowledge.
So, let’s take this one step at a time.
Drifting out to sea might be a problem but can likely be solved, whereas the bends could be a terminal embarrassment. So he signals a very slow ascent and at thirty feet sees the anchor coming down at a slant, because Moeava is apparently feeding the line slowly through the bow roller while steering from the cockpit and peering over the side at the same time. Damn — give the boy some credit for initiative. The anchor cruises along just behind the boat and over the divers at fifteen feet.
Where did Moe learn that? Ah! He could see on the chart plotter that we got carried into ninety feet. Never mind; let’s just hope he can keep the boat nearby for the next little while.
So the divers hover round the anchor as instructed, till the gathering is snug and stable — but then it’s not. Air expansion in so many buoyancy compensators on an ascent from ninety feet to fifteen would accelerate divers and an anchor toward the surface. That’s why every diver dumps his air on the way up, unless he doesn’t. A safety stop losing its safety exposes all the divers to complications, including a seasoned waterman now picturing himself writhing on deck, bent as a tourist, after yesterday’s encounter with carbon monoxide. At least he won’t get bent if he can manage to stay down in a harrowing current, which may be the single challenge remaining, except that challenges remaining have yet to get down to singular. Is this a pattern?
Never mind for now. A dive leader in a scramble has made a grave error in judgment. Ravid clambers into the cluster of bodies and buoyancy compensators, finding dump strings on right shoulders and left waists and dumping the air these divers should have had the training and presence of mind to dump on their own. But they don’t have the presence of mind or the smarts they were born with or trained to have, because they dive once a year and lose track of the tricky stuff, like basic volume exchange that works just as surely in reverse, expanding air on the way up just as it compresses air on the way down. A buoyancy compensator with a cubic foot of air at ninety-nine feet will expand to double that volume with each atmosphere — thirty-three feet — of ascent. So that becomes two cubes at sixty-six, four cubes at thirty-three and six cubes at fifteen.
Wait, that’s not right, but it doesn’t matter with the whole group rising out of its compression safety depth. Each pull of a dump string releases a trickle as the ascent continues — what’s wrong with these people? But wait! These people are certified — look! They see as clearly as I do and are dumping their top bladders and bottom bladders and back bladders too.
Why must you be so smug and arrogant when it comes to dive skills and calmness in the clutch? Is a macho asshole necessarily a better diver? Must you really show how much more you know than each and every tourist? Is that in fact the root cause of your problems and your...your life? It gets so tiresome. Maybe somebody could show you a thing or two. Like now...
Then he sees the meatball grinning, maybe — hard to tell if it’s a grin or a wince with his mouth hole full of regulator. What is unmistakable, however, is that the muscle man is pressing his BC inflator in short bursts, just enough to counterbalance each dump and keep the group hazardously ascending — just enough to make a dive leader scramble for all he’s worth and then scramble into overdrive. Well, a rowdy meatball might present a tussle on a swimming pool deck converted to a stage, but at fifteen feet, rising precipitously to twelve and then ten, he’s merely muscle-bent flotsam in a cruel current.
Ravid still keeps his dive knife in a clip sheath bound above his ankle, and it still has a blunt end to avoid inadvertent puncture or stabbing. And he’s still ready to use it on monofilament line snagging coral or net remnants or any manner of fouling material threatening a reef — or on duct tape on himself at night, adrift.
In a deft sweep he unclips the knife and has it out front as he rolls to within range of the meatball, who sees the flash and throws his arms up in defense. Ravid’s instinct is to slice into the meatball’s air bladder, ruining a three hundred dollar BC but securing the safety stop, too
. Then the loss can be charged to the meatball’s credit card.
Maybe.
It doesn’t matter, really, considering the consequences of the bends with possible drowning, and who knows where this current is headed? Talk about life flashing before his eyes; the next frame shows Ravid Rockulz trying to get on a decent boat in Cucamonga or Timbuktu, where all the crews on every dock snigger over the nimrod who lost a whole load of tourii, all bent and drowned, ascending with no safety stop from ninety-five feet on a sixty foot plan and then sweeping out to sea, where some of the bodies may still be, in parts or in lumps of shark shit.
The next frame flashes quickly as a blade. Ravid imagines that the BC will not actually be ruined, only cut and easily stitched over a new bladder — who cares?
Well, neither the BC nor the meatball are at risk from the knife, because the meatball kicks off, kicks away to flee the aggressor with the hostile intent. Then the meatball bobs to the surface. The dive group settles back down to fifteen feet, hugging each other and the anchor, watching the feisty fellow above make his way to the swim step at the stern.
Twenty minutes later everyone is on board, some scared silent, some chattering like oscillating fans over their brush with danger, with the huge shark and then the giant mantas and then again with the safety stop that didn’t come off too safely. Most of the divers keep a wary eye on the muscular fellow and the lean fellow, sensing tension. At the helm, Ravid warns Moeava to keep an eye on the despondent one. Moeava nods, and Ravid is relieved to feel confident in his partner’s skill on board.
He steps back to squeeze in among the divers and take a seat beside the thick one, whose elbows rest on his knees reflectively, like he’s on a toilet and in no rush. Ravid addresses the group. “That was great. Wasn’t it?” The translator gets the words but converts good cheer to mordant matter of fact. Most of the others nod and mumble their amazement. With greatness established, kind of, he proceeds to say what happened. “We got out of our plan. That’s never good. But look — ” Reaching into the pile of dive gear for his gauges he points out their maximum depth, ninety-three feet, because anything challenged on an injury case will come down to hard facts, so these are presented before witnesses. “Our dive plan was to sixty-five feet, but then we rode the current and saw the manta rays. That’s okay. We stayed at ninety-three feet for twenty-four minutes. That calls for a safety stop at fifteen feet. Three minutes ought to do it, but we stayed for five — all but one of us. So we’re within safe limits, and I don’t anticipate problems. Still, anytime we dive outside our plan, we take precautions. Okay?”
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