diving for cucumbers part 2

  Mike and I race to town after selling our catch at the tender. We are racing time to get in before the stores close. We need new belts on the compressor and I need to try and glue a new neck seal on my dive suit.

  As soon as I get cell phone reception I am on the phone with Ketchikan dive shop ordering a new dive undergarment. I have a spare dry suit but once my undergarment is wet I am done diving. Lesson well learned. I have a new undergarment on the way before we even reach town. I love the modern world of cell phones.

  The compressor belts are a quick fix and it is up and running. I spend all evening and  into the night working on replacing the neck seal on the dry suit.
  Five in the morning Mike and I are once again on the boat heading to Neva Strait.We race through the staging dive fleet and arrive on our spot about an hour before the eight o’clock dive opening time. 
  I don’t trust my neck seal repair so I squeeze into my back up suit. It is a custom made suit for a time when I weighed quite a bit less. Mike helps me wiggle, tug, and strain myself into it.
  Just before eight. The machines are running, Mike has me in about 25 feet of water. Hovering just outside us is the trooper boat, glasses trained on the divers, making sure no one enters the water one minute early.
 “Time!” Mike shouts.
 “Give me a couple more minutes in case the troopers watches are off from our cell phone time,” I shout back.
   “Three after!” Mike yells and I bail off the boat into the frigid Alaskan waters.
  Cucumbers are everywhere. They are stacked over themselves in what we divers consider the best picking. I am grabbing and stuffing bags as quickly as possible. The sweet air from the compressor is filling my chest as I pant from exertion.
  Good picking for me is about 20 minutes per bag. Right now I’m sending them up every 10 to 15 minutes… great picking.
  The seven bags I have taken down with me seem to vanish in no time. I slowly ascend to the surface with my last bag. I hand it to mike, spit out the regulator and shout above the noisy machines.
  “You doing OK?”
   “Great!” mike yells back.
  “I need a new stack of bags.”
   Mike helps me up on the back of the boat as he stuffs my dive bag with seven new bags. We are both giddy about the great picking.
  We only have untill noon today on this opening. Not much time considering how far behind we are from yesterday’s mishaps, but we are sure giving it the old college try.
  It seems in no time at all I feel the tug, tug, tug on my air hose signaling me to come to surface. Mike wants to talk to me.
  “Time is up!” he shouts when my head breaks water.
  I know I have sent up a lot of bags but I am not sure how many.  I’ve replenished my seven bag stock several times.
   “I think we’ve got them all,” Mike says once all the noisy machines are shut down. “I’m pretty sure you’ve picked enough to make 2,000 pounds for the two days.”
  We clean up the deck and motor to the tender. We are the first boat in line. We bucket our catch into his hoist system to be weighed.
  Sure enough, we have just made our total poundage for the day and a half opening. Two thousand pounds!
  It is an exciting run to town chatting about the past day and a half. Who would have thought a couple of old duffers could have made up that much ground after being behind so much on the first day.
 We are both exhausted, but do a good clean up of the boat before heading home.

 It will take a couple of days for both of us to get over the sore muscles, but with money in our pockets and smiles on our faces… life is great!

Diving for Cucumbers

Cold water seeped from my neck, down my chest, into my right arm, and finally down my legs. Bitingly cold. Sea cumbers were everywhere. I was picking as fast as I possibly could trying to ignore the cold that was quickly taking over my body.

  Mike (the guy I hire to tend my dive boat) and I left Sunday evening to race to our secret spot, drop anchor, and spend the night guarding our opening dive area. When we approached the dive area we were greeted by a wave of anchored boats. “I guess we were not the only ones with this idea, “ I grumbled to Mike as we cruised our way between the boats.

  We found our little niche spot without a boat on top of it and dropped our hook. We enjoyed a meal as darkness fell on the quite ocean world.

  Monday morning we were up at five getting things ready for the dive opening at eight. Boats were jockeying for positions, but all left us alone. A  big tug came through towing a barge and barked on the radio about not having much room to navigate through the dive fleet. “This might get interesting,” we commented.

  Mike counted me down to the final minute of eight while a big Alaska State Trooper boat idled through making sure we did not start one minute too soon.

  I found great picking right off the start and picked five bags in a hurry. Mike tugged my air hose to signal me to the surface. The kicker motor control cable had snapped.

  We spent a good hour repairing the control cable and at last I was back on the bottom searching for sea cumbers. That is when the cold water began seeping into my dry suit.

  Forty degree water saps ones strength in a hurry. I know a lot about hypothermia, and am very careful to keep myself in check. I needed to pick 2,000 pounds of cucumbers in a day and a half to get my quota, but time out of the water makes it nearly impossible to get the poundage. I pick one more bag and send it up. I am shivering like crazy and my teeth are chattering on the regulator.

  “Just a couple more bags and I’ll go up,” I keep telling myself. I pick hard trying to work my body to keep the heat up, but each time I press the equalize air button on my dive suit a new blast of cold water enters to chill my core again.

  At last I cannot feel my fingers. Time to come up.  I inflate the suit and watch my computer to make sure I don’t ascend to quickly and get the bends. My feet hit bottom. I look down, not believing what I feel. I have gone down and not up! I press my air button again. I feel air rush out my neck seal but still I am not heading for the surface.

  My fingers are so numb I am using the back of my thumb knuckle to push the air button, and I’m swimming hard to get up. At 13 feet I come to a standstill. It is crazy. I could drop my bag of cucumbers and get up or I could dump my weight belt and blast to the surface, or I could one hand climb my air hose… Just then I am yanked up by my air hose. Mike is hand over hand pulling me in! Super!

  Mikes eyes are big as he shouts, “ The air compressor belt broke, you have not air!”

  He helps me on board and we shut down the machines. I find my neck seal has blown out completely. I am soaked and freezing cold. I ask Mike to keep and eye on me as I warm up to make sure I don’t become overcome with hypothermia. We decided to sell our meager catch and head to town for repairs.

  Dive one is half over.