Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25170
A few minutes later I was startled out of my reverie when Miguel swam right up to me, tapped on my mask and firmly jerked his thumb up. But I was expe- riencing a wonderful floating sensation , communing with the fish. I was at one with the ocean, and was in no mood to cut the dive short. Miguel then grabbed my wrist and pulled my arm up to his mask so he could read my depth gauge. He then shoved his depth gauge in front of my mask, almost totally blocking my vision. All I could see was the needle pointing to the num- ber in the middle of the red zone: 140 feet. Under normal circumstances I would probably have panicked a bit, with an aroused fight-or-flight response, but by then I was so far into nitrogen narcosis, the euphoric stupor induced by a buildup of nitrogen gas in the blood under high pres- sure, that my lackadaisical mental reaction was more like: "Well ... isn't that interest- ing .. . I'm to be at 65 feet and I'm down at 140." er than I ever gone was 40 feet deep- depth far too long, had less than a quarter tank of air left, and zero inclination to save myself. My blood was so saturated with nitrogen that my arms and legs felt like jellyfish tentacles, my movements spastic, my coordination nonexistent, my will vanquished. Miguel and the other man each grasped me by one elbow and slowly-so as not to give me a case of the bends, which results when the severely compressed nitrogen in the body's joints and organs suddenly expands as the pressure drops- swam me upward. With their eyes constantly on my rapidly falling air supply gauge, they swam me up to about 15 feet. There they made an essential stop in an attempt to undo some of the internal damage from my lengthy immersion at depth by letting the nitrogen gas bleed slowly from my body. If they'd taken me right up top, the gas in my blood would have bubbled as all the pressure was released, causing an agonizing case of decom- pression sickness, and I'd have had to be rushed to a hyperbaric chamber--{)f which there were none on the island. I didn't have anywhere near enough air left in my tank for the required decompression time, so Miguel alternately took large breaths from his regulator then shoved it into my mouth, using an emergency technique called buddy- breathing. It's also called two-divers-on-a-tank- and if one panics, they can both die. When I breached the surface I didn't have enough air left in my tank to blowout a birthday candle. And I was such a useless wreck that Miguel and my other savior had to inflate my BCD and tow me back to the dive boat. I gradually recovered while lying on the deck as the dive boat sped back to Willemstad, and by the time I reached the dive shop I was myself again-and furious. I screamed at the proprietor for 10 minutes, explaining how his deceptively faulty depth gauge (which showed a zero reading at the start of a dive and then worked prop- erly down to 65 feet, where it froze) had almost killed me. He listened with half an ear, used fresh water to rinse the equipment I'd rented, and put it all back in the rental bins for tomorrow's customers. detail-obsessed gearhead! • YOUR GYPSY BLOOD ON FIRE