Hindsight is 20/20
What I should have done now, in retrospect, is told the guy:
“Your BC is inflated. Your weight belt is gone. You are not going to drown. There is no way, however, that I’m going to put this vessel at risk by coming over to pick up your sorry ass. Seventeen divers and three of my instructors are counting on this boat to get them safely back to shore. So what I’m going to do is pull 50 feet away from the wall and wait. When you decide to grow up and act like something other than a big sissy, you can swim over and get back on board.”
That’s what I should have done. The way the guy was carrying on, however, I believed at that instant that if I didn’t do something, he’d have a heart attack.
Just a few feet forward of the pilothouse door was a cleat. Tied to that cleat was 20 feet of heavy-duty dock line. I thought, “Okay, maybe if I pull right up over the guy and toss him this line, he’ll calm down.”
I proceeded to do just that. Not only did Idiot Diver not stop his yelling and screaming, he attempted to crawl eight feet straight up the line, back into the boat. Of course, once he was half way out of the water, he couldn’t go any further, and just froze. His carrying on, however, did not subside.
Now what do I do? I reached down, unfastened the cleat and proceed to walk the dock line — with the diver still attached to it — back to the swim step. As I did, the boat continued to drift closer and closer to the vertical rock wall.
As soon as I got the diver back to the swim ladder, I looked over my shoulder to see how close we were to the rocks. “Oh, shit…” was the only thing I could think, seeing that the bow of the boat was now only inches from disaster.
At this point, Idiot Diver had his feet on the ladder — but his hand were still holding on to the rope for dear life. I handed the line to the dentist. “Whatever you do,” I said, “Do not let go of this rope.”
I then looked down at Idiot Diver. “You’ve got two choices,” I told him. “You can either hang onto that ladder for dear life — or you can get ground into hamburger by a 28-inch, razor-sharp propeller. Your call…”
Wasting no time to take in the stunned look on the face of the diver, I rushed back to the pilot house and pulled straight back on the transmission levers. With just seconds to spare, the boat began to back away from the rocks and headed toward safety.
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