“Charles, are you OK?” A pause. “Charles?!” Although a stranger to us, the person’s panic was universal. Something’s wrong, said the look my partner, Phillip, and I shared before darting our eyes to the splashing in the water by the power cat next to us. “Is he? OK?” Phillip and I implored, as we watched one diver shake the shoulders of the other. His strangled shout answered our inquiry. “I NEED HELP!” the diver cried.
We knocked over our coffee tumblers launching the dink off of Ubiquitous faster than ever and raced over to find Charles’ head lolling, his words garbled, before he lost consciousness altogether and his dive buddy struggled to keep him afloat. While pulling his limp body from the water, the cat’s owner grabbed my shoulder. He pointed to a woman in his cockpit, her shaky hands struggling with a cell phone. “Please help my wife,” he pleaded. “She doesn’t know how to use the radio.”
Doesn’t know how to use the radio?
Was I shocked? A little. But mostly, I felt sympathy for her. And trepidation. What if her husband had a heart attack on passage? Or he fell overboard at night? She already looked terrified. Not knowing how to summon help on the water could I thought as I went to assist her. We were in the middle of a mooring field. No ambulance could help us out here.
