He remembers seeing only the sunlit cloudy water.
"Then nothing," said George Mikulski, days after almost drowning in a freak scuba diving incident in Deep Creek near a Cape St. Claire marina.
Then there was Arnold resident Dan Pendergast sitting on a porch across the creek Sunday, enjoying the day, when "all of the sudden on the pier people started screaming and pointing at the water."
Pendergast saw a person surfacing toward the middle of the creek.
"I got up, ran down the lawn, grabbed a paddle board, ran to the end of the pier and jumped in the water," he said. He paddled toward the pier and then flagged down a power boat.
As the boat neared, Pendergast dove in the general area where the swimmer was, but there was no sign of anyone. Unknown to Pendergast, Mikulski was unconscious on the sediment-rich creek bottom.
John Henschen was steering The Sugar Mama when he saw and heard Pendergast on the paddle board, frantically waving and screaming.
"We couldn't figure out what he was saying," said Henschen, who's lived in Cape St. Clare for 42 years. "I thought we were maybe running over something of his that was in the water."
Henschen's two friends, Matt and Angie Jewett, an ex-volunteer firefighter and nurse, were on the boat with him. Once they knew somebody was in trouble, their instincts kicked in.
"My husband and I quickly emptied out our pockets and dove in," Angie Jewett said. "We could hear them say that there was a diver that hasn't resurfaced."
They started diving down like Pendergast to try to feel for Mikulski and his shallow water diving gear in the hopes of attaching a safety line and a weight belt.
Moments later, Pendergast felt Mikulski's wetsuit with his feet. Then, Pendergast and Matt Jewett dove down and dragged Mikulski — who was not breathing and "totally blue" — to the surface. The three rescuers were able to get him some 50 yards to another boat's swimming platform.
Henschen had dropped his anchor and jumped into the water to help. Mikulski was now on the platform. Angie Jewett got on the swim platform and began administering CPR. Twenty chest compressions later and Mikulski started taking breaths.
"The first breath was very rugged and then the second breath didn't come real quickly," she said. "As the breaths became more regular the color started to come back."
Matt Jewett rolled Mikulski on his side.
"George, stay with me," Matt Jewett told him. "I could see him kind of look up to me and he was grunting ... I said one more time, 'George, stay with me,' and he gave me a head shake so I knew he could hear us."
County police and fire departments arrived. Emergency services took him to Anne Arundel Medical Center with injuries that weren't life-threatening, county fire officials said.
On Tuesday, Mikulski attributed the scare to a simple mistake: not attaching the safety line to the pier — a step he omitted because he was concerned it would get tangled in the pilings.
Mikulski was diving to search for a part that fell off his boat, as he couldn't find a replacement on the internet. His diving equipment only included a visual warning for low air, and he couldn't see it clearly in the murky creek water, so he guessed.
He also thought he was swimming along the pier and in 4 to 5 feet of water, but actually was drifting into the middle of the creek and deeper water — about 15 feet, he estimated. When his air ran out, he stood up to breach the surface, but the surface was still some distance above.
He swam up and breached the surface to make a distress call, but was dragged down by his cumbersome scuba equipment.
Mikulski repeated the process a second time and was able to ditch his gear, except for his weight belt. He surfaced a third time, sunk back down, tried to lose the weight belt and blacked out.
"My family could have been going to my funeral today," Mikulski said Tuesday. "But instead, I'm getting ready to take these heroes out to dinner."
