Hello all,
I wanted to share a story with you all before some of you forget that infectious smile Zak had. This will have you on the floor if you picture Zak telling the story.
Let me lay some foundation first, After Robyn finished her Masters the two of them went and traveled all over Europe for many months. During their trip of course Zak needs his dive fix when ever he could. So with that he had to dive and see WWII stuff. Now I'll let him tell it.
Hello Everyone!
Are you ready? Every bit of this story is true. I added no pepper, it needs none! This is by far my most wild story and personal growth experience I have ever had while diving. I feel (after the fact) that every scuba instructor or divemaster needs to have an experience that reminds them how it feels to be the "inexperinced" and have their comfort zone pushed to the brink so they can apreaceat what most new scuba students feel. Here is my story of survival.
I want to give you a little more physical detail about my dive guide for a better understanding of my experince.
My dive guide's name is Gerhard. He is a 6'4" Austrain, dressed in traditional Austrain clothing (Like the men in the movie Heidi ) pushing every bit of 300 pounds and ALL muscle. Hard to judge age, but late fifties at least. If he chooses to speak, he can only say a few words in English. His brother-in-law spoke English and told me a little about his diving experince: commercial diver and treasure hunter for 30 years. He has a look of a 19th century Austrian mountain climber and a 1960s commercial diver.
We met at 10am at a cafe on a rare rainy morning. We drive to what I think is going to be his dive shop. When we arrive, it was not what most of us would picture as a traditional "dive shop" it's a 100 + year old water front building with lots of personality. All wood and stone. I have yet to pass judgement...I'm more of less wondering if we are going to fill out any liability releases or if he is even going to check my C-Card. NOT!
He leads me inside and I found Heaven! There was more diving equipment in this place than one could imagine! Rebreathers! 4 scooters! Underwater Exposives! UW metal detectors, compressors, and a lot more! Most of all, and very important for you to know later in the story are UW Lights! The Europeans have always had far better lights than we can buy in the US! They burn brighter, longer, and much smaller, all rechargable, and very cool looking! He has dozens! AND ONLY ONE WAS CHARGED! After he grabed a bunch of gear for me, none of which I was able to test or try on before leaving to the dive site. He said, "One light...together dive...OK." That was the first and only thing he had said to me before we were in the water!
We go to the dive site. Nothing odd. A trail along the side of the road leading to the water. I have been told the VIS is 5 to 10 Meters, not bad. One light will suck, as long as I can use it and he followed, no big deal. I put my gear on. This is the begininng of the learning lesson. The gear didn't fit. The two peice 7mm suit and BCD were both a size too small and the weight belt was about 8 pounds too much. I got into it fine and told myself, "it'll be better UW". The reg looked fine, not old. MK20 first stage but some "weird" second stage. No computer. The longest, stiffest fins I have ever seen, and a WalMart mask at best. I am still just happy to be there and looking forward to the unknown.
We get to the water. Everthing is OK. But he has the light. He said a couple of things and used some hand gestures that lead me to believe that he was going to hand me the light when we got to the "spot" underwater. Cool. We get underwater. VIS is about 15' , but then we pass into it...the worst VIS amaginable at 20'. I am not more than a foot away from him and then the exciting happens. He grabs my tank valve and heads down a wall at a million feet per second. I don't even believe what is happening, I almost giggled (feeling like a newby all over again) until my reg turns into the hardest breathing reg in the world. There was something deadly wrong with the second stage that would not let me crack the seat. Every breath took all that I had! This is all going to happen simultaneously: He is pullinng me down by my tank valve...I can't get a full breath at all, my BCD is so tight that I can't put the sufficient amount of air into it to stay neutral (even if I! w! anted to) and still breath, the tightness of the suit was starting to cause my breathing to be labored (what seemed fine on the surface started to wear on me), the mask was leaking to a point that I couldn't clear it fast enough and trying to manage the BCD and get this guy off me (which is why I discribed him above...he was a monster...there was no getting him to let me go!), the VIS was ZERO! Again...he was pulling me down so fast I couldn't equalize my ears fast enough either! This all happend at the very, very start of the dive of course! Don't misunderstand...I was far from cool, my heart was pumping out of my chest and I was battleing the primal urge to BOLT! I made contact with my weight belt and just hoped it wouldn't come to ditching. I couldn't signal him either, he was behind and in front of me. I must of looked like a school boy being drug to the principal's office by the ear (imagine that position).
NOTE: I set my Citizen watch to dive mode (thankfully) before we went down.
When he stoped pulling and I finally got most of everything under control ("Stop Breath Think Act" WORKS!!) The last time I had looked at my gauges was just before he took me down the wall, 20'. I looked (it was very hard, I had to put the gauge to my mask and try to focus my eyes) at my gauges and my depth gauge read 40 (+-) METERS!!!!! I couldn't beleive it! I had to do the math twice! I didn't want to believe it! I looked at me watch and it read 155 feet!!! Holy ****! I couldn't believe it!
Now we're at 155 feet and he is still holding onto me and the light. By this time I don't care about the light...I WANT HIM OFF! I turned as far around as possible and pushed him, it was hard not to be rude, but I grabed his arm and pulled it off of me with all my might. I'm sure he thought I was going to bolt. He let go of me and and I started up slowly, hand over hand up the wall. When we got to about 130, I had relaxed a little, the reg was still pulling very hard, but I told my self to try to see something on this dive, which I paid for (that was very hard). I turned to him and pointed to his light. Instead of taking the clip off of his BCD (he had a coil lanyard), her just handed me the light. Now once again we are attached, not as bad as a few minutes earlier. Your are probaly asking yourself..."Did Zak get to see any WWII stuff?" A little. The story is better than the stuff I saw. There were a couple of 50 cal. guns off of a tank that was located much deeper.&! nb! sp;But that's it. I kinda wanted to be out of the water.
I did do a saftey stop at 20 and 15 feet. During the stop I reflected, evaluated, and laughed at what just happened. It wan't funny at all, but what else can you do?
During the walk back to the car he started to talk to me, very odd after a couple of hours of silence. He said "Beautiful Diver, Beautiful Diver." I couldn't believe it. I laughed and said thanks.
He later told me, though a translater, that I was the best American he had ever taken diving, all others panic and go to surface quickly... My response in my head was "NO ****!!??"
Everything worked out well. Another expeirence to add to the box.
After the dive......
I want to finsh by saying that he is a very nice guy, a good diver, but just doesn't have much training in dive leadership. When we got back to his place we sat down and drank coffee for the next two hours talking (as much as we could through a limited vocab and hand signals) about all that he has done.
At the end of WWII, when the far out Nazi camps around Austria learned that the Allies/Soviets had surounded Berlin, the Nazi camps (which almost all of them were SS camps) started dumping everything they had into the lakes that they were stationed on. Tanks, trucks, documents, everything.
Almost all of the upper ranks of the SS had summer homes on the these very same lakes. When they had gotten the same news, they ordered the dumping of their tons of personal GOLD (They were paid with gold bars taken from the Soviets, Jews, Polish,and many others) into the lake thinking they would come back later to get it. Of course they never did and the gold is still out there. Gerhard has recovered tons of artifacts, from still folded uniforms (in perfect condition) and SS rings that the solders got when they graduated. Because the SS were the ones in charge of the concentration & works camps, they knew they would be the ones charged for war crimes and crimes against humanity, so they dumped everything would connect them to that Nazi group.
Because of the lack of oxygen and light, and the temprature of the lake, lots of what he found and still finds is very well preserved. He showed me his personal collection of Nazi artifacts that were abosutly amazing,scary, and priceless. He has researched and found the locations of SS camps all through Austria that were on lakes and has been diving them for 30 years. I could go on and on about the stacks of stuff he has and the bars of gold! No kidding! He has Nazi gold bars! He has found three bars, still has them, and I saw them. He is still looking for more of course. A couple of months ago he was diving with CNN in this one lake that he was sure there was more gold, he dove for three weeks and found zero. But still, if you could only see what he has, it's amazing!!
Well, thanks for reading. I hope you'er all doing well.
Zak
