The Sunken Harbor Drop, Pt. 2
Pt. 2
Five days later, we were ordered out to sea again after another event had come onto our radar. A mad dash to our supplier the day before, then prep and batch a commensurate amount of product for our client in preparation for the barreling. It had to be a 24-hour turnaround given the event deadline, and we did our best to assemble every part with a steely eye, rigorous measurement and gentle care.
Then we set out to deliver our cargo to the deep, paddling light to moderate chop with an even, offshore breeze. Clear skies and bright sunshine completed these favorable conditions. A Coast Guard search & rescue plane with its back door lowered flew just a few hundred feet above us, and we waved to the crew watching us from above hanging out the rear opening. Hopefully some good luck would come our way…
On the horizon, we spotted something beguiling, something straight out of a famous Jules Verne undersea tale - something we were concerned could curtail our attempt to deliver this cargo today; the sail and deck of a US Navy submarine had broken the horizon just in front of us.
As we approached our drop zone, a patrol craft plied the waves toward us steadily and assertively. I had run-ins with the beast in the distance before, and the patrol crafts that secured its overt prowling of the seas near our civilian shores. Issuing a friendly wave to the patrol boat as soon as I could see its captain, I gestured in acknowledgment that we were well aware of the presence of the nuclear attack submarine in the intermediate distance. The Navy often sends their boats to train in our littoral environment, employing an array of acoustic devices along the shallow seabed to test the stealth of their subs and train their crews in shallow water handling.
The skipper of the patrol boat and I exchanged words politely, and I assured him our motivation was to hunt for an elusive, large black grouper on the reef below us. This was also true, as it was a personal goal to land this sly fish, having come face-to-face with it the previous week during the warm-up dive. And just our luck: The skipper was sympathetic to our cause, and although we were smack dab on the boundary of the restricted zone for the sub’s maneuvers that day, we would be allowed to stay in place. That is, unless the officers on watch perched on that steel sail hailed him about a kayak bobbing too near their hull.
Our cover was set, permission granted and the patrol boat was off to continue screening for their naval exercises. Now we had to act quickly, before anything could change and cause them to shoo us off for good, ruining our shot for the day.
I geared up and anchored quickly, finding the spot with ease once I had slipped into the water from the side of my kayak. With the anchor secured, I swam to the compartment holding our large barrel and floated it to the drop zone, gently fighting an even 1.4 knot current. Two deep breath cycles and I was kicking downward toward our rig at 9:53.
The waters were even warmer now at 82ºF, perfectly comfortable for rash guards in lieu of the season’s 3mm wetsuit wear, which also meant I could weight myself for the lighter garb to effectively counteract the buoyancy of the larger barrel without sacrificing speed down or up. A large barrel such as this two gallon tank will create significant resistance against you as you descend, with its bigger volume of heavenly contents and bulk. Instructors and other divers would pooh-pooh the overweighting of a diver as a safety concern, but in this case, I felt comfortable using them because the dive would be so quick - about 30 seconds - and I could easily release either weight system on my person should things go south. So down I went.
Upon reaching a suitable attachment point on the rig, I noticed two of the bags had filled with seawater and were now floating closer to the bottom. Not the end of the world of course, but another indicator the undersea aging was actively having its way with our barrels.
The new cargo was connected to the station, and almost immediately I recognized something we were not prepared for… added buoyancy to the rig, so much that the anchor weight was beginning to dance along the seabed. My head began envisioning the entirety of this thing moving with the current and wave action, sauntering across the seabed into who knows where. Someone could come across them if they wind up in the shallows. Worse - they could be lost to the depths!
I did not want to disturb the nearby reef structure by attaching it to that. This would be a cardinal sin, going against our ethos; even though, by now, we were creating artificial reef habitat with the substrate our enterprise had introduced to these waters. A spot nearby the reef, with no apparent life on structure, appeared to be the interim solution until we could return with reinforcement.
OK, I felt uneasy at the prospect of losing our work, but with the Navy operating in close proximity - where the hell was that submarine, I couldn’t hear a squeak from its screw - and time running against us, I decided to haul anchor and head back to shore, where the next steps would need to be thought out for securing our rig so that we could confidently continue aging our barrels in the North Atlantic. But before we weighed anchor, I saw a startled group of fish head my way, and excited at the prospect of a potential catch, started swimming toward the area they had just evacuated.
I was not disappointed - a 10’ sawfish came cruising through the reef, just off the bottom, with all its grace and rarity intact. Absolutely magnificent, its head swaying left to right and back again as it passed through. I tried to pace it, and shouted out to Billy for the underwater camera, but it was too fast and leaving our safety area quickly. A rare, majestic sighting burned into the memory banks, guided by gobsmacked retinas.
