He's going to Ram us!!!

This day started out like so many others. We were working in the Pacific about 800 miles southwest of Costa Rica. Being mid-summer the weather was nice most of the time this close to the Equator. A little too hot if anything. These are the days that everyone on board wants to be a recovery swimmer. You get to get off the ship and get wet. The water is so warm that you wear just trunks, no wet suit. Also it’s nice to get off the ship even for a brief period. 

It’s a very small world on a 210ft. boat. With my trusty swim partner J.B. we launched the small boat in a 3ft sea one afternoon to recover Alvin after another dive to the bottom for science. We were still pretty new at this launch and recovery method on the Atlantis II. But today would be a piece of cake in these nice flat seas and full daylight.

Craig Dickson the coxswain on the small boat, dropped us close by the sub once we spotted it on the surface about 500m off the port bow of the Atlantis II. Everything was going well. We got the safety lines on and the tow bridle rigged. We stood on the either side of the sail while I talked on the phone to the pilot inside telling him that we were ready and he should call the ship and tell them.

At this point the ship should pass along side us by about 100' trailing the towline slowly. As the ship passes us the small boat will pick up the towline and drive it over to us.

Something is not right here. The Atlantis II is now only 500' away and headed right at us. It seemed to be going pretty fast too. I'm yelling at the pilot and I can hear him yelling on the radio but I can't take my eyes off the bow of the ship that is now towering over us.

Jon comes over to my side of the sub, away from the ship and we get ready to jump and swim for our lives as it looks like the ship is going to cut the sub in half. In the last second we decide not to jump as the bow wake pushes the sub to one side and we begin to bounce off the hull for the whole length of the ship.

I have two vivid memories of this moment. First, the hull of the ship at the bow does not go straight up and down, it curves out from the water line on up. So that when we were at the bow we were so close to the hull then when I looked up I could not see the sky. Second, I could see the edge of the rail where a crowd had gathered. They had a look of abject horror on their faces and they were pointing at me!

This was just a flash as we continued to bounce off the hull causing the sub to heel over unnaturally. I can only imagine what the three people inside were thinking at that point.

We had another big problem coming up fast. There was a davit with a cable hanging down into the water to a transducer and we were about to get tangled up in it. We should have but by some stroke of luck, we passed outboard of it. But not completely. The side of Alvin's sample basket caught the cable and the basket was pulled from the sub and was dangling from it's safety lines.  As luck would have it the basket was full of major samplers; eight of them. These are used to sample hydro-thermal fluid from the vents and cost about $25k each.

On pure adrenaline we swam down the 10ft to retrieve each sampler and swam it over to the small boat then going back for more. I am now cursing every cigarette I've smoked but we got it done.

The ship now had come to a stop and we got the tow line. From that point on the rest went as planned. I had to write up my side of what happened and the Navy investigated, but if anything came out of it, no one ever told me.