B
bluh2o
Guest
They say the best kind of boat is the one you don’t have to own, your friends boat for instance. It’s true you won’t have to maintain it or pay for it but once you’re on your friend’s boat the down side is he’s the boss and you’re not. I’ve got control issues. That's why I'd never been to the Forbidden Island, until last week. My buddy has invited me to cross the channel in his boat a bunch of times. My reasons to decline have usually exploited the family obligations or the business. Now you know the real reason, if anyone is going to micro-manage my weekend I want it to be me.
But the four day forecast did look favorable and it had been months since a dive. Even this forum had a pretty long dry spell for diving stories, so I accepted his invitation. Captain Bligh and I have been diving together for fifteen years or so and up until last weekend I kept my autonomy by paddling my own Kayak. I knew the Captain to be careful, meticulous and analytical to the extreme, every contingency would be plotted with safety and the first priority in mind; fill the fish box. His style was opposite of mine, I eat wrong before I dive, I don't wash equipment, I rely on fate, and I don't care so much if I get fish. I would never cross the channel and live on a small, old boat for three days in the ocean wilderness if it was my old, small boat. Take our Kayaks for instance. We bought them together years ago. The captain’s still looks new. It has never once been dragged across the sand or spent more than two hours in direct sunlight. Mine on the other hand looks like a piece of bleached plastic left in a high tide line for years. The only thing missing is barnacles along the water line. How do we find the same dive spot twice? I paddle around until I get a feeling it’s below me. The Captain uses a hand held GPS. I once saw him paddle for half an hour to a plot point and throw out the anchor to have it land directly on top of the small rock he had in mind which was home to two lobsters.
The other problem with the Captain is he likes to line fish as well as spearfish. I hate to line fish. It must have been my Grandfathers fault. He wanted to share his love of fishing with me when I was a young boy. Unfortunately he did. Let's just say he was not a happy go lucky fisherman. Also, I like to see a fish and take it, line fishing is so hit and miss, you have to imagine a fish under you. I think, “Can’t we just go look for a real fish and then spear it for dinner? Line fishing is a bad gamble, an exercise in hope and faith I’d rather save for church. An endless ocean, scant fish, and a boat dragging bouncing lures in the huge wake of loud twin Even-Rudes . Gallons of gas per fish is how I would measure it.
Once we turned off our course five minutes out of the harbor to chase a bird pile and drop lures in, I clearly needed an attitude adjustment. It was obvious that a one and a half hour run across the channel to dive could easily take most of the day since the Captain is a fisherman who employs all fishing modalities. So I let go, I employed total yogic surrender. My time was not my own in the big picture anyway was it?
While letting the Captain drive around in circles over the ocean chasing ghosts of birds and fish I relaxed and considered the domestic life behind me. Executing a trip like this thirty years ago would have been accomplished between the popping sound of the beer can opening and the crunching sound of the empty being crushed under foot. But somehow domestication happened and it became more difficult to plot my escape. I let myself be domesticated. It's the ending part of the word that is revealing. It means making someone into something that's against his original nature. I thought, "How did it happen that I've been anchored to a home and these civilized, social routines for so long without getting away? (don’t answer that) I used to get into the wilderness often before these last few decades of family life happened.
It’s the little dive trips, even the two-hour go-outs that have kept me sane. Like Hunter S. Thompson said, "Once you’re in the ocean you are part of the food chain." We need the wilderness to balance out the forced march of domestication and lucky for some of us near water, five minutes from shore and we’re in the deep wilds.
Half way across the Captain gave up chasing phantoms and gunned the engines for the dive spot. We anchored on a pin-point of rock surrounded by hundreds of fathoms of dark blue sea. The postage stamp anchorage below us looked like an opal set against Cobalt colored silk. The water on every side of it dropped into the deep Pacific. I thought, finally, let’s get our wetsuits on! Unfortunately the Captain was not done fishing yet. We had to catch live bait for an hour or so as part of his grand plan. This way we could troll some more after our first dive and before our second. It was killing me but what could I do? Fortunately the whole food chain below us was seething with life and the bait fish came up quickly. I was into the water first. Back home at last! My tag line was rigged wrong, my wet suit was poorly fastened but who cares? The Captain proceeded methodically. Special anti-fog solution for his mask must be applied from a container he had bought 16 years ago. "Sixteen years” I said? “In sixteen years you have never lost that little thing?” His tag line was fed out into the water carefully, his bait, lures and chum fastened to his weight belt like the original Predator from another planet.
The water below me was like a scene from a fantasy screen saver. The deepest blue, the highest resolution, every species of fish in the book. I was so excited I could only get down a few meters. A glance over to the Captain a couple hundred feet off and he’s down to the end of his tag line in a shooting profile seventy five feet below on his first breath. Next moment he’s kicking and pulling his line for the surface and hauling something heavy, he was heading toward the boat even as he ascended and kicked toward it with the fish arm locked against his body.
I knew it might be a while before he got back into the water because he would need to scrub the fish before taking it on board, as per trip procedure, and then there was the icing and brining rituals to perform. I floated around out there in heaven, serenaded by whale songs so intense I felt the hum’s and growls in my skin. On one descent I gazed out into the gin clear blue and witnessed three behemouths looming into view not sixty feet away. A trio of Humpback whales, a mother/baby combo and a bigger scout just under them. The fifteen foot baby was swimming close to mom’s 45 foot long back as if laminated there. They flexed their tail flukes down and soared their long white pectoral wings up in unison, turned all three heads and came straight for me. It was silent then, the songs had stopped. These were animals as large as freight trains silently coming to me and I instinctively began to back paddle. They drifted past just a few feet away. I looked mom in the eye and was a little perplexed because they all looked like they were swimming upside down since the upper jaws on Humpbacks are small and look like they should be the lower jaws. I forgot about breathing for a long time. Moments passed and they faded away into the dark background.
Sure we had to scrub each fish first but we filled the fish box. We saw more biomass in three days than I’ll see all year. My bottom time improved a bit but I should really watch what I eat and get out there more. I’m back now in my chair in the living room hoping Captain Bligh calls again soon.
But the four day forecast did look favorable and it had been months since a dive. Even this forum had a pretty long dry spell for diving stories, so I accepted his invitation. Captain Bligh and I have been diving together for fifteen years or so and up until last weekend I kept my autonomy by paddling my own Kayak. I knew the Captain to be careful, meticulous and analytical to the extreme, every contingency would be plotted with safety and the first priority in mind; fill the fish box. His style was opposite of mine, I eat wrong before I dive, I don't wash equipment, I rely on fate, and I don't care so much if I get fish. I would never cross the channel and live on a small, old boat for three days in the ocean wilderness if it was my old, small boat. Take our Kayaks for instance. We bought them together years ago. The captain’s still looks new. It has never once been dragged across the sand or spent more than two hours in direct sunlight. Mine on the other hand looks like a piece of bleached plastic left in a high tide line for years. The only thing missing is barnacles along the water line. How do we find the same dive spot twice? I paddle around until I get a feeling it’s below me. The Captain uses a hand held GPS. I once saw him paddle for half an hour to a plot point and throw out the anchor to have it land directly on top of the small rock he had in mind which was home to two lobsters.
The other problem with the Captain is he likes to line fish as well as spearfish. I hate to line fish. It must have been my Grandfathers fault. He wanted to share his love of fishing with me when I was a young boy. Unfortunately he did. Let's just say he was not a happy go lucky fisherman. Also, I like to see a fish and take it, line fishing is so hit and miss, you have to imagine a fish under you. I think, “Can’t we just go look for a real fish and then spear it for dinner? Line fishing is a bad gamble, an exercise in hope and faith I’d rather save for church. An endless ocean, scant fish, and a boat dragging bouncing lures in the huge wake of loud twin Even-Rudes . Gallons of gas per fish is how I would measure it.
Once we turned off our course five minutes out of the harbor to chase a bird pile and drop lures in, I clearly needed an attitude adjustment. It was obvious that a one and a half hour run across the channel to dive could easily take most of the day since the Captain is a fisherman who employs all fishing modalities. So I let go, I employed total yogic surrender. My time was not my own in the big picture anyway was it?
While letting the Captain drive around in circles over the ocean chasing ghosts of birds and fish I relaxed and considered the domestic life behind me. Executing a trip like this thirty years ago would have been accomplished between the popping sound of the beer can opening and the crunching sound of the empty being crushed under foot. But somehow domestication happened and it became more difficult to plot my escape. I let myself be domesticated. It's the ending part of the word that is revealing. It means making someone into something that's against his original nature. I thought, "How did it happen that I've been anchored to a home and these civilized, social routines for so long without getting away? (don’t answer that) I used to get into the wilderness often before these last few decades of family life happened.
It’s the little dive trips, even the two-hour go-outs that have kept me sane. Like Hunter S. Thompson said, "Once you’re in the ocean you are part of the food chain." We need the wilderness to balance out the forced march of domestication and lucky for some of us near water, five minutes from shore and we’re in the deep wilds.
Half way across the Captain gave up chasing phantoms and gunned the engines for the dive spot. We anchored on a pin-point of rock surrounded by hundreds of fathoms of dark blue sea. The postage stamp anchorage below us looked like an opal set against Cobalt colored silk. The water on every side of it dropped into the deep Pacific. I thought, finally, let’s get our wetsuits on! Unfortunately the Captain was not done fishing yet. We had to catch live bait for an hour or so as part of his grand plan. This way we could troll some more after our first dive and before our second. It was killing me but what could I do? Fortunately the whole food chain below us was seething with life and the bait fish came up quickly. I was into the water first. Back home at last! My tag line was rigged wrong, my wet suit was poorly fastened but who cares? The Captain proceeded methodically. Special anti-fog solution for his mask must be applied from a container he had bought 16 years ago. "Sixteen years” I said? “In sixteen years you have never lost that little thing?” His tag line was fed out into the water carefully, his bait, lures and chum fastened to his weight belt like the original Predator from another planet.
The water below me was like a scene from a fantasy screen saver. The deepest blue, the highest resolution, every species of fish in the book. I was so excited I could only get down a few meters. A glance over to the Captain a couple hundred feet off and he’s down to the end of his tag line in a shooting profile seventy five feet below on his first breath. Next moment he’s kicking and pulling his line for the surface and hauling something heavy, he was heading toward the boat even as he ascended and kicked toward it with the fish arm locked against his body.
I knew it might be a while before he got back into the water because he would need to scrub the fish before taking it on board, as per trip procedure, and then there was the icing and brining rituals to perform. I floated around out there in heaven, serenaded by whale songs so intense I felt the hum’s and growls in my skin. On one descent I gazed out into the gin clear blue and witnessed three behemouths looming into view not sixty feet away. A trio of Humpback whales, a mother/baby combo and a bigger scout just under them. The fifteen foot baby was swimming close to mom’s 45 foot long back as if laminated there. They flexed their tail flukes down and soared their long white pectoral wings up in unison, turned all three heads and came straight for me. It was silent then, the songs had stopped. These were animals as large as freight trains silently coming to me and I instinctively began to back paddle. They drifted past just a few feet away. I looked mom in the eye and was a little perplexed because they all looked like they were swimming upside down since the upper jaws on Humpbacks are small and look like they should be the lower jaws. I forgot about breathing for a long time. Moments passed and they faded away into the dark background.
Sure we had to scrub each fish first but we filled the fish box. We saw more biomass in three days than I’ll see all year. My bottom time improved a bit but I should really watch what I eat and get out there more. I’m back now in my chair in the living room hoping Captain Bligh calls again soon.
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