Adrift

The scuba diver surfaced just in time to see the boat pull away.

In Silence and Darkness

For weeks Dan Carlock had been looking forward to this trip with the Ocean Adventures Dive Co. It was the technical engineer's way to escape the stresses of his job in the aerospace industry.

It wouldn't be a scenic cruise this morning, however. As he boarded the Sundiver at dawn on Sunday, April 25, 2004, wet gray fog blanketed the Southern California coast.

It took an hour for the Sundiver, with 17 recreational divers, three dive masters and Capt. Ray Arntz aboard, to rumble to its first dive location of the day -- the massive Eureka oil rig, which lay seven miles off the coast of Newport Beach. At about 8:30 a.m. Arntz powered down the engine. And Carlock stared up at the looming skeleton of the rig.

Certified for advanced open-water dives, the six-foot-two bachelor carefully checked his equipment: an underwater camera, a slate on which divers write notes, a whistle, and a yellow-green neon safety tube that could be inflated as both a marker and a flotation device. As an engineer, he paid attention to details.

Aboard the training ship Argus, resting in a cove of Catalina Island, some 20 miles away, 17 Boy Scouts and Sea Scouts were finishing breakfast. It was the second day of a two-day trip for Troop 681 out of Rancho Bernardo, California.

The day before, the Scouts had climbed a mast of the century-old wooden tall ship, swung out on ropes and dropped into the calm dark blue waters for a swim. They had also conducted a man-overboard drill.

But the training did not go well. When First Mate Al Sorkin threw a "pretend person" in the water, half the boys failed to locate and keep pointing at the object as required. Sorkin, 50, had the gruff bearing of a movie pirate. "If that was one of you," he scolded, "we wouldn't find you. You would drown."

Carlock was in the first group of divers to venture into the water at the rig. There was a stiff current, and it required a hard swim to get underneath the main platform.

Once they got into position, Carlock and the others were told to stay within the rig's structure during their dive. That way, they could use its columns to keep from being swept along by the current.

It was about 8:45 a.m. when Carlock and three other divers headed down into the darkness.

In the heavy fog, even the rambunctious Scouts were subdued. Capt. Fred Bockmiller, Sr., who at 72 had helmed the Argus for more than 25 years, knew that to make their way back to harbor in Newport Beach, they would have to cross busy shipping lanes. When the sun was shining, that was as easy as crossing the street. But fog changed everything. Most modern ships are made of plastic or metal. The Argus is made of wood -- easily missed by radar.

Minutes into his dive, at about 30 feet, Dan Carlock felt pressure start to build in his ears. He stopped, and waited for them to "pop." The other three members of his group continued on down. He'd catch up by following their bubbles.

But when he began his descent, he found that the bubbles disappeared. At 108 feet, still not seeing the team, Carlock halted. Where were they? In the silence and darkness, he deliberated -- and decided the only logical thing to do was return to the surface.

He moved upward to a depth of 15 feet. He rested there for a routine three-minute decompression to allow his body to adjust. Anemic light filtered down from above.

When Carlock finally splashed to the surface, all he could see was the heavy layer of fog over gray water. He thought he caught a glimpse of the boat, but then it disappeared. The rig was in the wrong place -- the current must have swept him away.

He was alone.

All Alone

Shortly after 10 a.m. aboard the Argus, Scouts and crew members were watching the radar screen anxiously when a big oval blob appeared. "Cargo ship," Captain Bockmiller said.

Bockmiller slowed the sailboat's auxiliary engines to a cautious crawl.

The Scouts heard the foghorns of a cargo container ship bleating every few minutes, but couldn't see a thing through the thick gray mist.

Scanning the ocean in all directions, Carlock could just make out the silhouette of the Sundiver through the fog. Following scuba-diving safety protocols, he took his whistle and blew hard and repeatedly. But the rig's groaning foghorn and the boat's rumbling engines drowned him out.

Surely, he thought, when the crew took a head count, they'd realize he was missing and come looking for him. After all, he had signed out on the board that tallies each dive group.

Treading water, he blew the whistle again. Nothing. Carlock no longer heard the boat's engine. "They left me," he said in horrified disbelief. "They've gone to the second dive site."

Zack Mayberry wasn't familiar with lifeboat procedures, but the 15-year-old was not anxious about sea traffic and the foggy conditions. A member of the Sea Scouts, Zack had loved being on the water since he was a child growing up in Southern California. He helped calm frayed nerves, explaining to one boy what the sounds were that they were hearing in the fog.

With two ships now on the radar screen, Bockmiller decided against immediately crossing the shipping lanes. He turned the Argus 45 degrees west.

Even in his wet suit, Carlock was losing body heat in the 60-degree water. He had inflated his vest and the yellow-green nylon safety tube to mark his position. Then he dropped his dive weights for extra buoyancy, but his arms were beginning to go numb and his legs felt weak.

The engineer in him took command. He grabbed his underwater camera, aimed it at his watch and snapped two pictures. Then he turned the camera on himself, and at arm's length snapped two more. He reached for his diving slate and used the pencil to write the time: 10:28. He was determined to stay rational and leave a record, though, he thought grimly, it might only be a record for those who would find his remains.

Carlock had been in the water for over an hour. Once, he saw an airplane through a break in the fog. And waved frantically. The pilot didn't see him. He heard foghorns grow louder, then fade away.

What were the people on the dive boat doing? Searching? Had they reported him missing? He desperately ran down a list of "what ifs": What if hypothermia sets in? What if dusk comes and sharks start to feed? What if I die? Will the shock kill my parents? Will friends know how I felt about them? To conserve strength, he rolled onto his back and floated. Abandoned, engulfed by fog covering the ocean, he began to pray. "Hail Mary, full of grace ..."

In the Coast Guard's operations center at Los Angeles, the first alert came in at 12:03 p.m. on the channel used by the public for distress calls.

"We may have a problem," Captain Arntz of the Sundiver said. Then he told the dispatcher that a scuba diver was missing.

At 12:05 p.m., the Coast Guard issued an Urgent Marine Broadcast, giving all boaters information about the missing diver. A 41-foot Coast Guard cutter then switched on sirens and blue lights and headed at 20 knots for the location of the Sundiver. A helicopter was dispatched for an aerial search and to drop a locator buoy.

But Carlock had not been missed until divers resurfaced at the second dive site. Everyone was searching in the wrong spot -- ten miles from where Carlock was adrift -- and all alone.

Guardian Angels

It was past noon, and Carlock had been in the water for more than three hours. Now his prayers were more immediate. "God, please send me your guardian angels. Whisper in the captain's ear and tell him where I'm at."

The heavy fog was slowly burning off, going from a thick blanket to a quilt with patches of clearing. Carlock looked up and saw three birds flying in formation across the sky -- the first living things he had seen in hours. "Are those my angels?" he asked.

The birds, he reasoned, must be flying back and forth between land. He began to notice bits of kelp and wood. Were they coming from land? Carlock turned in the direction of the birds and the kelp. Then, to fight panic, he began setting small goals: "Right here, in this five- or ten-second window, I'm okay."

Sea Scout Zack Mayberry was enjoying the adventure of zigzagging across the busy shipping lanes. He had borrowed Captain Bockmiller's binoculars and joined the watch, looking out for hazards.

It was shortly after 12:30 p.m. The other Scouts were scattered about the ship -- doing cleanup duty in the galley, taking naps, learning to tie knots. The sun was finally peeking through.

At his post and peering through the binoculars, Zack called out sightings to Craig McNeill, the crew member manning the wheel, to help him keep a safe distance from other craft.

"Boat to starboard," Zack called out. "Boat to port." With the binoculars lowered for a moment, something off the ship's port side caught Zack's eye. What was that waving in the ocean? A yellow balloon? Trash? He had seen both in the water earlier.

He then lifted the binoculars to his eyes -- and blinked. He looked again.

Was that a person?

He handed the binoculars over to McNeill, who gave a quick look and turned back toward Zack. Together, the two began to yell: "Man overboard! Man overboard!"

From bunks below, the awakened teenagers hustled on deck. Following Zack's lead, they began to point to a spot in the ocean on the port side.

Bockmiller went in the direction the Scouts indicated. He scanned the waves with the binoculars. It's a dead man, he thought. We're going to have to bring a corpse on board. He looked again -- and the body moved.

Bockmiller grabbed the radio next to the ship's wheel and called out an Urgent Marine Broadcast: "We have a person in the water!"

Carlock saw a ship slowly coming into view. But it seemed to be a ship from a storybook or a dream, a majestic ship with tall masts and billowing sails. Am I seeing things? Am I rational?

The ship was real. It was headed toward him. He started blowing his whistle, waving the yellow-green neon tube and flailing his arms. But he was so weak. His legs were like jelly.

Do they see me? Please see me.

Bockmiller sent McNeill and a Scout out in a small outboard. They found the exhausted diver and dragged him aboard. Within minutes he was being helped onto the deck of the tall ship.

Unsteady on his legs, and with a stunned expression on his pale face, Carlock settled down on the galley deck. Suddenly there were hands helping him remove his diving gear and stripping off his wet suit. Somebody was wrapping him in blankets. Someone else was giving him a pair of sweatpants.

He was cold, tired and emotionally drained. But some combination of his rational discipline, chance and prayer had kept him alive.

Coast Guard officials pieced together what had happened: Steve Ladd, the owner of Ocean Adventures Dive Co., said in a written statement that Dan Carlock's "dive buddy," who had met him only that morning, did not report him missing. A dive master had called roll and heard everyone answer. The Sundiver then proceeded to its second diving spot.

The Coast Guard charged Sundiver captain Ray Arntz with negligence. He settled by agreeing to a one-month suspension of the Coast Guard-issued license that allows him to transport passengers, and by performing 80 hours of community service. Dan Carlock is back on his feet, but the adventurous engineer has not as yet returned to scuba diving.