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.
