| Home
Into The Abyss Rick and Uncle Bernie Dive Sea Empress Off Hillsboro Inlet "Mouth of the Rat" or Boca Raton, Florida - June 29, 1996 -
TWO DIVERS DESCEND a
long rope to the deck of the capsized cement barge, Sea Empress. It is a fine
summer morning in the warm waters off Florida's East Coast. Behind them on the surface,
sunlight sparkles on the water and backlights their descent. On every deep dive, there
comes a point where the divers reach a twilight "halfway house" ... the surface
lost high above them and the bottom not yet fully in sight. Here they hang suspended and
enveloped in a Few fish inhabit this watery, intermediate ultramarine-hued zone. Not yet in view are the gaudy bottom corals and sponges, and the bright-hued fish who hover always over the rusty plates of the old wreck below. A few errant shafts of sunlight probe these deep blue waters - outlier currents perhaps, stained by the ubiquitous Gulf Stream not far offshore. It's an interval in the dive appropriate for private thoughts (but no second thoughts!). The divers pause only briefly - perhaps to "blow back" and relieve "squeezes"... It is probably the closest thing most of us ever know to the astronaut's weightlessness, loneliness, and silence of Outer Space. BWP 11/1/96 | Home |
