Joshua shielded his eyes from the sunlight glaring across the cyan blue Caribbean. After scanning the horizon in all directions for boat traffic or other hazards, he checked his instrument panel for safety or warning lights. At just 16, he knew he was blessed that his dad had not only brought him and his brother along, but also treated them as responsible members of the team.
He wasn't going to let his father down.
Joshua checked his throttle again, low idle, just enough to maintain steerage. GPS showed they were on target right above the tallest of the three pyramid structures. "We are good to go! Right over top of it!" Joshua craned his neck to shout back at Uncle Stu aft on the dive platform.
He received a thumbs-up in return.
Joshua's gaze lingered for a moment on his father and his little brother, Caleb. He looked like a scuba jet with extra tanks sticking out at forty-five degree angles from either side of his own tanks. His little brother, acting as safety diver for their father at age fourteen! Joshua was very proud of him.
Diving to almost two hundred feet with a bottom time of just under twenty minutes would require thirty-four minutes of total decompression time. After his twenty minutes of exploration, Teddy would have to stop at ninety-five feet, half his deepest depth, for a minute or more. Then two minutes at thirty feet, six minutes at twenty feet and twenty minutes at ten feet, in order to out-gas all the nitrogen that would have built up in his system. They had to be extra careful. A case of the bends could be fatal so far from decent health care.
Uncle Stu would take over at twenty feet to give Caleb a break. Even though they were in the warm Caribbean, Caleb would be in the water for almost forty minutes—his core body temperature would begin to drop despite the wetsuit.
Squinting his eyes to scan the horizon, Joshua heard the ancient squawk box screwed to the wall on the bridge spring to life for a communications check.
"Comms… eck. Do you read me?" The box looked about as bad as it functioned. The voices were scratchy, but it worked. Barely. "Comms. Comms. Diver 1, Teddy here. Do you read me?"
Teddy and Caleb were wearing full face masks which allowed for communications, although you had to be careful to enunciate very clearly. "Diver 2, Caleb…." Joshua returned to scanning his instruments and the horizon.
"Checkout complete. You are ready to dive." Uncle Stu's voice was crystal clear coming from a land mic with no interference from a mask.
"Diver 1 going in." Teddy took a giant backwards step off the platform and landed with a splash.
"Diver 2." Caleb splashed in a few feet away.
"Equalizing." Teddy's voice had a nasally tone as he pinched his nose shut and forced air into his ears. "You okay, Caleb?"
"Okay. Descending." Caleb's tone was pinched with excitement.
"Descending. Forty feet." Teddy was calm. The water always had that effect on him.
"Wait." It was Caleb sounding concerned. "I need to ascend. I am having trouble with my right ear."
"Take it easy. Ascend a little. It will clear." Teddy was a calm, reassuring voice.
"You okay, Sport?" Uncle Stu was also using a calm voice.
The boys had been diving since age twelve and were exceptional divers. Both of them had their Master Diver and Rescue Diver certifications, but diving was always a dangerous activity that required care and caution.
"Clear. It cleared. Descending. Thirty-five feet." Caleb had followed the right procedure to clear a blockage in the Eustachian tubes—ascend to relieve pressure. Pinch the nose closed and gently force air into the ears until they cleared.
Now they were free to descend deeper.
"Descending. Sixty feet. Visibility one hundred feet—its crystal clear down here." Teddy called the depths.
There was no limit to how fast one could descend. Even though he wanted to maximize his bottom time, Teddy knew it was important to go slowly to check equipment for malfunctions, establish good communication with your buddy and the surface and to manage growing pressure in the ears.
"Descending to ninety feet. I'm slowing." Caleb was reporting arrival at his stop.
He would hover here holding onto the surface line, which was marked at ten-foot intervals to back-up the diver's depth gauges. By holding the line, there would be no inadvertent ascending or descending. Caleb touched the red button on his wrist a few times to fill his buoyancy compensator with just the right amount of air to remain at this depth.
He had to be careful because air under pressure would begin to expand as he rose pulling him to the surface. He would continue to adjust the air in his vest with smaller and smaller puffs of air until he achieved neutral buoyancy, neither ascending nor descending.
"Are you good here? I can wait a few minutes with you, if you like?" It was easy to hear the suppressed eagerness in Teddy's voice.
"I'm okay." Caleb put a brave face on it, but he was about to be left alone at almost one hundred feet under water. At that depth, even the Caribbean ocean was cold, dark and lonely. Almost anything could come swimming out of the deep blue distance—it took a lot of willpower to maintain control of the imagination.
"I'll be alright." Caleb worked to control his fear.
"Hold on a minute, guys. I splashed the rover and she should be down to you in a minute or two. There you are, just coming into vision now!" Uncle Stu walked onto the bridge and set up the iPad so Joshua could watch from the Captain's chair.
Uncle Stu and the boys had been playing with the remotely operated vehicle for the last few days. Yet another toy purchased with Ms. Marple's money that never seemed to end. Every time they got a new toy, Teddy's heart rate would increase: I wonder what this is going to cost me in the long run?
"Are you okay, Caleb?" Teddy was eager to be off. He was about to touch stones that might date back four thousand years or more.
"Okay, Dad. Get going." Caleb was calm. The line from the rover heading to the surface seemed to remind him that help was not far away.
"Diver 1 descending… back in time!" Teddy was in his element.
Growing up on the island of Maui in Hawaii the water had always been his place of peace, snorkeling along the reefs and finding tourist sunglasses in the surf. A local friend and doctor took him diving for the first time and he almost drowned. Teddy was hooked!
Doc took a wild guess at young Teddy's body weight and got it wrong. Teddy quickly sunk to the bottom about thirty feet from shore. He'd been using a snorkel on the way out to conserve air and he hadn't been trained to do a regulator sweep.
With no other options, Teddy held his breath and walked along the bottom of the ocean until he reached the shore. In that way, the extra weight was a blessing because it kept his feet firmly planted on the ocean floor as he walked.
Arriving breathless on the shore, young Teddy lay in the surf gulping great gasps of oxygen as each wave passed over his head and receded. Doc showed up and loosened his equipment before dragging him up the beach by his dive vest. Teddy lay flat out catching his breath, relieved to be alive.
Teddy was trying to shrug out of his tanks when the doctor grabbed him by the lapels and said: "Oh, no you don't. Back on the horse with you or you will never try this again."
Doc removed a few weights from his weight belt and shoved young Teddy back into the surf—this time with his regulator in his mouth.
An hour later, an eternally grateful young diving enthusiast emerged from the surf.