The Native Iowan

January 18, 2003…

I’m such a nice guy… I don’t make the crew start work until 9:30 on Saturdays. Lots of work to do. But, hell, it’s Saturday.

I slept in. by 7:30am the sun was so bright you had to get out of bed. I had woke up at 4:30 am, 5:30 am, 6:30 am and each time, merrily remembered I got to sleep in, rolled over and continued my mundane dreaming.

The kids were late. Only Paul and Natasha (the only two who spent last night in my house) made it to breakfast. We were pretty much on time. Spent the morning cleaning up old drums, repainting them, etc. I ran around, hassled with the electric authority and answered emails and faxes.

I leave on Monday for 10 days. Now that we own the depot I don’t like being away. It’s easier right now in that we are way low of fuel. Will be completely out next week. Have heaps of work to do and could use a couple weeks of no fuel for maintenance.

One big project we are just finishing is setting the navigation aids in the harbor. Over the years the nav-aids have fallen down, been vandalized or simply stolen. We have messed around a lot with this issue this year. If the nav-aids are not right the tanker cannot come into the harbor. If the tanker doesn’t come in we don’t get fuel. The gov’t is mismanaged and claims no money for the repair of such things. Thus I have spent time and money this year working on it all.

The last beacon is ready to go in. I fabricated it on the wharf. It is 3 old oil drums loaded with Steel and concrete. I took an 8-inch PVC pipe and used it as the first 12 feet of the “post”. We tied it to the base with steel rods and concreted it into the base. We then man-handled the empty post and the heavy concrete base (it has to weight 4 to 500 kgs) to the wharf where we dumped it in 10 feet of water. Terry and his crew then inserted a 1″ pipe 24 feet long into a PCV pipe 3 inches in diameter and filled the 3″ pipe with concrete. This pipe went into t he 8″ pipe and was subsequently concreted in. So we have a big, heavy base. 12 feet of 8″ pipe and 12 feel of 3″ pipe with a red beacon on the top and a steep pipe in the middle. I figure it should do the trick and last quite a while.

So all of this is in the ocean off my wharf. I figured I could make “lift bags” out of drums, tie the drums to the base and float the entire shebang then tow it to the place where it has to go. I have done under water lifting before. It is not that hard.

I’m in the water. Tying ropes, getting drums set. One drum leaks bad. I discard it. I get another drum set perfectly. It is under water but has enough positive buoyancy to be in place. The ropes are balanced and tight.

The drum is 6 to 8 feet under water. All I have to do is get another 3 or 4 drums set and the whole show will be able to be floated off the bottom.

I sink a couple more drums. My helpers don’t have a clear idea of what I am doing so they do not realize I do not want the drums to sink and lay down on the bottom. I want to partially sink them. Keep some buoyancy so they float just above the base I want to lift.

Two drums are floating above me. I have their ropes in my hand. I grab the hook we made to tie the ropes to and pull the drums down. The boys did not close the bung lid on the drum. The air is venting out and losing its buoyancy. I stick my head under the drum and exhale so my air will flow into the holes in the bottom of the drum. I have the ropes in one hand the base in the other. My ears are under pressure but I can’t “clear”. My hands are both busy. I have the buoyancy of the drums equalized. I have to tie them to the base then go up and tighten the bung.

My ear pops. Needles of pain shoot through my neck and I feel water rush down the side of my neck. It is a terrible feeling. A wrong feeling. I just blew an eardrum.

At the same time the drums lose buoyancy and drop to the bottom. My right leg cramps and I am pretty unhappy with myself.

I surface and the boys don’t have a clue what is wrong. I am probably unfair to them but as “tenders” on a project they should be paying attention. Not the case.

So we end the day without having completed our projects. With a blown eardrum (I have done this once before and it does heal) I can’t dive for a while. I’ll have to get someone else to do the lift for me.

Life could be worse. I head out of here soon. My ear will mend. We will get the lift completed. It was one of those sad / ego trips. I wanted to show my guys how to do it and “show off” a bit in doing so. Just goes to show that activities surrounded by ego inspired intentions usually end in a fucked up finale’.