Читать книгу Into the Abyss. Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World онлайн

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We roared along, bouncing from wave to wave, battered by wind and spray. With each impact onto a wave I was bounced upwards by the sponson I was sitting on, holding on for grim life with both hands to the lifelines along the top of the sponson. At the same time I tried to wedge and secure my feet under heavy pieces of dive gear on the floor.

We headed out until we got into deeper water about ½ -1 mile offshore. The boat didn’t have an echo sounder - they had not become popular and cheap in those days, as they are now so we didn’t know what depth of water was beneath us.

After a short journey of 10-15 minutes out, the cox throttled back on the outboard tiller. We slowed and then the Zodiac dropped off the plane and wallowed to a halt before the pursuing wake caught up with us. The cox had the anchor ready and threw it over the side. We made an educated guess as to the depth we were in from the amount of anchor rope we had paid out.

Once the anchor had snagged on something on the seabed the wind blew us round so that we were head into the wind and waves. We now started getting kitted up and I soon noticed that the slow wallowing action of the stationary boat started to affect some of the divers – even the hard looking guys in beards. One was sick over the side and one or two others started going a bit greenish/grey. I felt quite fine and, as if in some coming of age ritual, it made me feel as though perhaps I had the bottle for this after all.