Monday, August 19, 2013

Breathless


Adrift
The Illustration: Original artwork entitled ‘Adrift’ by the artist “HD”.  I’m grateful to the artist for permission to use Adrift and for our chats about the dangers and thrills of diving.

Sailor girl: The other day we awoke to find a small Bristol sloop anchored near our diving buoy in the cove below my house. There was no sign of activity aboard and after breakfast Cyndi and I suited up to swim with the dolphins and stopped by the sloop on the way to the buoy. No one answered our call so we boarded from the small dive platform off the stern. There were women’s things aboard, sports clothes, swim suits, lingerie, and a well stocked slit-kit containing; a partial pack of Yaz pills, the box and empty case for a recently fitted All-Flex (it was a new Rx filled by a Spanish Town pharmacy) that she must be using for flood insurance, a packet of Japanese super sheer condoms, silicone lube and medium absorbency tampons.

But there was no sign of the woman herself and no indication of anyone else being aboard. From the gear strewn on the aft deck; a buoyancy compensator, weight belt and fins it appeared she may have gone diving w/o all the all equipment necessary to handle the tricky mix of salt and fresh water since she had anchored over the aquifer outflow. There was no diver-down flag flying from the buoy, but she had arrived at night. A solo woman sailing at night in coastal waters of the islands takes strong nerves even with GPS navigating and depth sounding equipment with which the sloop was equipped so we thought she must be a competent sailor.

Diver down: we assumed the woman had gone diving so Cyndi and I buckled ourselves into our Ladyhawk BCs and scuba sets - FFMs and 130 HP steel tanks of Nitrox (because I planned to introduce Cyndi to Junior) – put the diver-down flag on the buoy and went into the water to search for sailor girl. It didn’t take long to find her. The water is very clear. All we had to do was look down. The bottom there is at 60 feet and is smooth rock of the lava tube kept scoured of marine growth by the current. It was hard to see her at first in black neoprene against the dark rock. She wasn’t moving and there were no bubbles. She could have been holding her breath to look closely at something on the wall which she floated close to, but then I saw the yellow mouthpiece of her reg was caught in a rock cleft and she was floating in the current tethered to the wall by the hose of her reg. Her 2nd stage getting caught in the wall was the only thing that had prevented her from being swept out to sea by the aquifer current.

I had Cyndi get a lift bag from the zodiac and tie the reel line to the dive platform of the sloop then follow me to the bottom where I was examining sailor girl.  In the cold water she hadn’t been dead long enough for rigor mortis to start as her arms and legs were fluttering in the current. We looked her over. She was wearing a black neoprene tropical weight swim-skin, hood and mask, but no gloves, booties or fins.  I was glad the crabs and fish hadn’t gotten started and there were only a few nibbles on her full lips still partially colored by bright red lipstick which also coated the mouthpiece of her reg.  She had a pretty face and a figure that would delight her male admirers if the way she filled her swim-skin was any indication. But she was far past that now her body only good as food for the marine life in the cove if we didn’t recover it and report her death to the authorities. I was surprised her mask was not flooded. Her eyes were wide seemingly in a look of surprise and her mouth was open with tiny fish swimming in and out.  I slipped a line from the lift bag under the shoulder straps of her tank, tied it off securely, pried the mouthpiece of her reg out of the wall fissure, hit the inflate button on the lift-bag cylinder and up we went.

Body aboard: With sailor girl on the surface I used the small winch to lift most of her weight as we guided her aboard and laid her on the deck. I turned her over on her side to get as much water out of her throat as possible and found she was draining huge black clots of blood. I was proud of Cyndi, she wasn’t squeamish about helping with the corpse, but of course she has been around Adolph and dead bodies before (almost always girls) and there was no odor of decay as yet so I was proud of how at 18 she handled the situation. We stripped off sailor girl’s expensive swim-skin which was Cyndi’s size and I checked sailor girl’s vagina to see what she had been wearing. As I suspected it was a 70 mm All-Flex, but she also had a tampon inserted with the strings tucked inside (so they didn’t wick sea water into her vagina) a trick professional escorts use to prevent liquefied semen from staining tight clothing if they have to be out and about before the last of a clients ejaculate drains out. Having no need for either I put the All-Flex and tampon back inside her, then radioed the local constabulary. While we waited we looked, but sailor girl seemed to have no ID, driver’s license, credit cards, boat rental papers (I’d recognized the sloop as a rental from Spanish Town) or anything with her name on it to tell us who she was

As a well known friend of the Duchess, who is a full time resident on Virgin Gorda, I had no problem explaining how we found sailor girl and asked that we be told what her cause of death was. The police seemed more interested in trying to find drugs (which they didn’t) than dealing with yet another diving fatality, but they did take the body away and returned the rental boat to the marina at Spanish Town. No one asked about her missing wetsuit though from the lividity marks on the body it was obvious she had been wearing one when she died. My guess, from the blood in her throat is that she had a rare pulmonary aneurism which burst from the water pressure, but who she was, what caused her to come here and dive in the first place w/o her BC and fins is a puzzlement.  

 


4 comments:

  1. I certainly hope that someone figures out who she was and how she died. If it was due to the reg being pulled from her mouth and drowning, or if it's due to a aneurism as you suggest, that'd be a bad way to go. I'd guess she probably got knocked up on something and neglected her normal equipment, or someone offed her.

    BTW, what ethnicity was she? The Japanese condoms might indicate she could be from Asia somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Eric, she was Caucasian. The super thin condoms are used by a lot of girls down here as they are high quality, hardly noticeable, great for a quickie where you don’t want to deal with a lot of coital discharge afterward and the best insurance against catching something from a casual hookup.

      The condoms have also been used in a surprising number of bondage gasmask fatalities with the victim restrained and the condom slipped over an empty gasmask fitting or placed in the filter canister as a diaphragm to block air flow when the canister is screwed in place.

      We are all very interested in the results of the autopsy. Pregnancy is a possibility, but she was on the pill and the last pill had been taken the day before we found her. Her dive computer, which she left on the after deck with her other gear, showed she had a lot of deep bottom time in the days leading up to her death so a DCS seizure could also be a possibility.

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  2. A post worthy of Inspector Clousseau! Why the tampon in addition to the diaphragm? Perhaps she was recently laid and was preventing the drippies or the discharge of semen into the waters exciting god-knows-what creatures. You did tamper with evidence because any semen in the tampon would point to a "person of interest" and the Swim Skin could have had additional clues.

    Unlikely that she sailed there alone. Whoever laid her likely offed her for whatever reason and then motored away on a dinghy. He (assumption) was careless in not taking her fins and gloves with her to the depths but those things can be hard enough to get onto oneself let alone on another in a limp state.

    Japanese condoms are quite available in most tourist areas of the world and it would more likely indicate an Asiatic partner than her own ethnicity. I cannot tell what nationality a condom is when it is in me! Men can based on proper sizing.

    Great post and Eric seems as interested as I in the outcome. I shall get out my detective kit and see what shows up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. >Why the tampon in addition to the diaphragm? Perhaps she was recently laid and was preventing the drippies or the discharge of semen into the waters exciting god-knows-what creatures

      My guess is the tampon was left over from a previous days encounter and forgotten, though as I mentioned the strings had been tucked inside to prevent wicking water into her vagina. That doesn’t always work, but as you mentioned I think she was using it to absorb coital discharge from an unprotected encounter. Of course she already had her All-Flex inserted so she must have been planning or had already had dive-sex and was using it for flood insurance.

      Of course an All-Flex rim will distort below 30 feet and then is ineffective for contraceptive or flood protection [Which may explain why since sailor girl was found 60 feet below the surface the rim of her new diaphragm was slightly kinked in several spots when I removed it.] so perhaps she was taken in one of the many swimming pools in the villas around Spanish Town.

      My experience with coital and menstrual discharge while diving has been that it doesn’t seem to attract dangerous fish such as sharks and barracuda. I know there are a lot of stories about menstruating women being canapés for sharks, but studies of a large group of shark victims doesn’t seem to support that. I think it’s more a swimmer displaying signs of panic, thrashing about who attracts predators looking for a meal. I dive both a Reflexions and a Diva cup – used when I’ll be where I can’t empty all day and won’t be having sex - when menstrual and have had no problem with sharks the few times they were passing and curious, though I was terrified at the time.

      >You did tamper with evidence because any semen in the tampon would point to a "person of interest" and the Swim Skin could have had additional clues.

      Well, yes. But I wore exam gloves and reinserted her diaphragm and stuffed the expanded tampon soggy with their fluids back inside her, though the tampon was a tricky task! So if his DNA is in a database somewhere they should be able to get a match. You should see Cyndi in SG’s swim-skin! It fits her like a coat of paint! And in the hood she is gorgeously mysterious! Totally covered and simultaneously totally on view! I imagine like something out of a man’s erotic fantasy.

      Delete

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Powys , Wales, United Kingdom
I'm a classically trained dancer and SAB grad. A Dance Captain and go-to girl overseeing high-roller entertainment for a major casino/resort