The Boiler Maker
By Joshua Russo
We signed up for the lobster season opener at Cortez Banks this year, 2010. The weather at the banks forced us closer to shore after two days of excellent diving. With fast moving currents and surges on the bottom and huge waves on the surface, Cortez is double black diamond, seriously advanced diving on the best days. You don’t mess with Cortez in a storm. Channel Islands can get hairy quickly too. They’re a small chain of islands on the open ocean, completely exposed. On the morning of the third day we awoke at the southwest side of Santa Barbara Island. Our first dive was relatively uneventful. Dropping in at 90’ heading south, we hit a wall and followed it east till we came to a large crevice littered with boulders. We saw several lobsters, most too deep in their holes to reach or in holes with too many exits for us to pose a threat to them. The highlight of this dive was the huge Cabezon. This was the biggest Cabezon either my buddy or I had ever seen and he was not afraid of us in the least.
Our second dive was at a location called, “The Boiler Maker.” From the surface all you can see is a bubbling, churning, white frothy explosion of surges and waves. The Boiler Maker is an underwater pile of rocks and boulders that lurks just below the surface, causing 10’-20’ waves to form instantly at its western edge and break just as suddenly. The surge created by this force explodes against the rocks below, and from the surface it looks like someone is throwing dynamite into the water. During the pre-dive briefing the captain points at this area and says, “That’s where the lobsters are. If you find yourself getting shallow, you’re too close, get out of there; but as close as your skill level allows you to get to that, that’s where they are.”
We exited the boat and headed north for The Boiler Maker. My buddy and I got separated during the hunt which is not unusual for this type of diving; we’re hunting, not touring. We have a plan and a search pattern and what happens quite often is while your head is in a hole looking for bugs, your buddy is chasing one the other way and you get separated. Once you’re done in your hole or chasing your bug, you resume your pattern and usually you run into your buddy again. The hole I was in on this dive was a channel cut cleanly in the bottom of the ocean floor at about 25’ deep. As I was searching this channel, the walls started getting taller providing even more holes for the tasty little bugs to hide in. It was a great place to hunt --- occasionally opening up into a foxhole-type pit and everything was out of the surge. I came to a three-way intersection and turned west. I was at a depth of 25’. I made a few kicks in this direction, still searching for lobsters when a sudden surge with tremendous force came through. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing to hold onto and no way to resist the force of this surge. In two seconds I went from happily searching the ocean floor at 25’ to standing on a rock, out of the water with 10’ waves crashing and exploding all around me.
As the wave that threw me on the rock receded, I knew I had to get off this rock. The last place I wanted to be is between one of these waves and a rock. I went head first off the front as the wave receded with me and I dived. In my head I was screaming, “GET DEEP, GET DEEP NOW.” Kicking and spinning, kicking and spinning. I made it! I found myself out of the current at 30’ in the bottom of a cylindrical pit, carved straight out of the rocks. Laying on my belly at the bottom of this pit, the waves above were so strong the bubbles and foam from the breakers were rolling on my back. I checked my air and at this depth I had about 30 minutes remaining. Now I went into survival mode, checking my resources, evaluating my options, formulating plans A, B and C, while in my head now I was repeating, “No wrong choices. Panic kills divers. No wrong choices, Panic kills divers.”
The lucidity an adrenaline boost of this size gives is impossible to explain if you’ve never experienced it. I knew north got me here, what I didn’t know was how far in I was or how close, in what direction out was, but if north got me in, south gets me out. I checked my compass and turned to face the south wall of the cylinder they call The Boiler Maker. The gravel bottom sloped upward and I could see a crack in the wall big enough for me to swim through at depth. I started for the crack and another big set of waves started to break. The pit was filled with bubbles and gravel and, as I got shallower, I was picked up and rolled by the force of the waves. I dived again to the deep side of the pit and waited. “No wrong choices.” When the set was over, I bolted for the crack. I made it! Now I’m swimming south through this crack and I’m not going to be happy till I’m outta here.
I made it about 50’ when the next big set came through. I was swimming through the crack and I felt the precursor to that same surge that initially threw me out on a rock. The ocean goes still, you know, when something goes from a systematic or rhythmic pattern to completely still. It’s about to change its pattern, the opposite of still is moving and in this area moving means fast. I had less than a second from the time I felt the stillness till the surge hit, and the only thing other than me in that crack was a boulder wedged between the two sides and suspended off the bottom. I grabbed it. Providing as small a profile as I could to reduce my resistance, I flapped in the current like a piece of cloth hanging from a vehicle on the freeway. My grip was slipping, I knew I only had to hold on for a few seconds and the surge would subside. When it did I didn’t even have a chance to sigh when I realized that it was coming back the other way and there was no way for me to flip over this rock and let it pass again. When it hits, it hits sudden like being hit by a car. I dropped down and bent my legs into a fetal position. I bellied up to this boulder with my arms outstretched over the top and I tried to crush that boulder. It was the only way I was going to be able to immobilize myself in that surge, and for the next few minutes that boulder was my Wubby, (Mr. Mom reference), and I wasn’t giving it up. Flapping like a bandana in the wind when the surge came through one way, trying to make diamonds out of common stone when it came through the other way. It was like trying to hold on to the outside of a carnival ride while it’s spinning, and if the surge was five seconds longer in either direction, this would be an obituary.
Being shot at a rock from a water canon was not my destiny this day. I had time to check my air now, 20 minutes remaining. Crack is still heading south. My head was repeating, “No wrong choices, panic kills divers. North got you in here, south gets you out”. I knew that this was a big set and I had to wait it out. The next small set is mine I said to myself, it has to be.
Five minutes later, without warning, I was prepared to get impaled on that boulder again when a comparatively slow breeze of a surge came by. THIS IS IT! I’m not waiting to see how long this set is. If the next wave isn’t a hurricane, I’m taking it. Gentle breeze on my face, pause, it’s good. I exploded like an Olympic sprinter, riding that surge, kicking as strong as I could and I came out of that crack still at 25’, still swimming. I’m not stopping till I’m out of there. Three hundred yards later at a depth of 50’ I was down to 1000 lbs of air in my tank. It was time to ascend. When I got to the surface, I looked north again and saw that in my exodus, I had swum right under the boat and gone another 150 yards --- but I was out of there. I have no delusions of grandeur; it was by the grace of god I made it out of there. All it would have taken was for one thing more to go wrong, and I wouldn’t be here to tell the story. This was the best vacation ever. Back at work now and my stress levels are zero.