The impossible dive

If you didn’t read yesterday’s blog, you should do that first. Just so I don’t have to repeat the whole story of how Pedro lost his sunglasses in the ocean and then made a foolish bet that he could find them again.

In short, if our fishing guide, Rigo, can actually locate the exact spot along a 125-mile long archipelago where Pedro’s sunglasses flew off his head and sunk to the bottom of the sea and if Pedro can then free-dive down in a choppy ocean, find and retrieve his shades, then he will get a new pair of expensive sunglasses, tickets to Wimbleton for two people, and a date with a Swedish hottie at a fancy restaurant in Los Angeles.

So how did it all turn out? Well, we fished all day and then all three skiffs ended up at the tarpon honeyhole near sunset, just as we had the day Pedro lost his hat and sunglasses. And about an hour before sunset, we all headed down the channel to a spot where Rigo thought the sunglasses might have fallen.

I’ve got to say the weather was even worse than the afternoon Pedro had lost them in the first place, the wind coming out of the southeast with gusts up to 30 mph, churning the water around us like a washing machine. And the channel stream was moving so quickly that when I accidentally dropped an empty Cristal beer can on the surface, the current floated it several yards away before I could even think of grabbing it.

 

 

 

Still, Pedro was convinced he was going to find his glasses. Or maybe he was just bluffing us at this point. Anyway, Greg, who is a bit of a saint, offered to dive alongside Pedro, primarily as a safety concern but also, I think, to give him a little moral support. So the two of them put on snorkels and masks and fell off the side of the skiff into the sea.

Later, Greg told me that the minute they got underwater, he knew the bet was lost. “I guess we were sort of assuming the bottom would be sandy,” he said, “but instead it was covered in eel grass several feet high. So even if the sunglasses were down there, how would we ever spot them?”

Pedro must have figured out the same thing because after making a half-dozen dives or so, he decided to go to Plan B. Which meant swimming up to the boat and acting like he was resting for a moment while secretly grabbing the spare pair of sunglasses he’d been using all day and sneaking them into his swimtrunks.

“I wasn’t going to cheat,” he said later. “I just wanted to get a rise out of you guys when I came to the surface holding a pair of sunglasses.”

Yeah, right.

 

 

 

So he dives back down for what he figures is his last descent, the bet lost. Meanwhile, the rest of us light up our victory cigars and prepare for a little “I-told-you-so” ribbing. Which is when Pedro popped to the surface in the twilight, gasping for air, and holding not one but two pairs of sunglasses in his hands. He’d found them.

The shout we made must have been heard all the way back in Havana. I know it was loud enough to disturb a half-dozen herons fishing for their dinner on the flats on the other side of the channel.

Pedro lifted himself into the skiff, still breathing heavily, and told us the story: Half way down to the bottom, he’d dropped the spare pair of sunglasses, just to see how far the originals might have drifted in the current. He followed them down, grabbed them and prepared to come to the surface to play his joke on us. Which is when he noticed another pair of sunglasses—the pair he’d been diving for—sitting on top of the swaying eel grass just a few feet away. With his air almost expended and fearing he’d never find them again, he made a desperate effort to stay down long enough to grab both pairs of glasses and then quickly swim to the surface. Before drowning himself.

And he made it.

Amazing, no?

So now Hardy needs to round up a couple of tickets to Wimbleton. And I need to place an order for a pair of expensive Polarized fishing glasses. But that’s nothing compared to Fletcher’s challenge. He’s got to explain to the cute Swedish girl that works in his office why she’s going on a date with a photographer from Colorado. And why he’s going to pay for it.

Can’t wait to see how that plays out.