| sperbonzo |
05-30-2007 10:41 AM |
creepy little SUCBA mini-adventure over the weekend...
So I have a friend that owns a bunch of cell phone stores throughout the keys that I haven't hung out with in almost 2 years. He invited my wife Vino and I down to Big Pine Key for Memorial day weekend to do some diving and hang out.
We drive down Friday afternoon, and go hang out at a couple of the local spots, live music, dancing, drinking, casual friendly people... Nice!
Saturday the weather is kind of snotty, so we drive down to Key West, see a movie, hang out a bit,etc...
Sunday the sun is shining, and we head out on his boat. It's a beautiful day, but the wind is blowing pretty strongly, (and had been for the 5 days previous), so when we get to a dive spot inside the reef, where the waves aren't too rough, the seas have churned up the bottom and the visability sucks! :(
We take the boat back to my buddies house, and load up the fishing gear, since diving doesn't look good. We anchor the boat near a bridge, and the tide is pulling the back of the boat towards the bridge, making it easy to cast into the dark water underneath.
We're having a great time, drinking and fishing in the sunshine, when all of the sudden my friends girlfriend yells something about the anchor, and I look up to see the last of the anchor line running out of the windlass, as the boat starts drifting down-current towards the bridge. I run up the stairs to the helm, get the engines started and drive the boat away from the bridge, no problem.
Now we have a lost anchor, so while my buddy circles the boat around, I get into my SCUBA gear and set up a dive flag to tow along with me, as there are a lot of boats going to and fro under the bridge.
I roll off the side of the boat in the area where we think we originally dropped the anchor, and go down the bottom, about 25 feet under. The visibility is really bad, maybe 5 or 6 feet max, with the sand swirling and billowing around me. I try to get my bearings with my compass and the current and start searching for the anchor. I can hear boats passing pretty close overhead, and although I'm deep enough that they won't affect me, it's still kind of unnerving.
After about 15 minutes of searching I decide to rest for a bit, and let the current take me down closer to where the bridge must be, thinking that the anchor line may have drifted down that way, and I can follow it back to the anchor.
I can tell that I'm nearing the bridge as the water in front of me suddenly starts to get dark, and the current, forced in between the bridge uprights, suddenly starts to accelerate. I realize that I had better start swimming back or it's going to suck me through and then I will have to have my friend come get me and drop me off above the bridge again.
As the line of darkness comes towards me I catch sight of something huge and silver moving through the billowing silt in front of me, first one, then 3 or 4 of them, massive shapes larger then myself, that I can barely make out as I now start to swim backwards against the current that is pulling me towards them.
This really starts to creep me out!
As I'm now really pumping my fins to get out of there, a couple of the big silver shapes come out the darkness either side of me, and I realize that they are massive Tarpon,(a game fish) about 5 to 6 feet long, maybe 130 pounds. I've dove with sharks before, and it's exciting, but not creepy, there was just something about this situation that was getting to me.... the increasing current, the bad visibility, boats running overhead, having no dive buddy, the huge shadow of the bridge, etc...
Of course I managed to get out of the there, then finally found the anchor about 5 minutes later, followed the chain to the anchor line, then slowly came up, listening for boats and keeping my dive flag line tight, so that I would be close to it when I surfaced.
Got up to the top, gave the thumbs up to my buddies boat circling about 100 feet away, and held up the anchor line. Everybody cheered, and they came and got me out of there.
:thumbsup
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