10/24/2024
It's never perfect. Re-Write.
Diver Down
Chapter 1
Wearing a white t-shirt and blue Wrangler jeans. I stand barefoot on the cool steel platform of a 155ft tall oil drilling rig, seven-teen miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s mid-August. Hurricane season storms are just beginning to form through-out the Gulf. Hundreds of miles away.
Yet, I experience the currents and witness the surges daily. Waves beat the rig day and night as if it didn’t belong here. Willing to swallow us all into the depths at first chance. We’re at her mercy. At all times. Commercial diving 101.
The morning sunlight is warm on my young, hairless face as it slowly breaks the endless horizon above our open ocean. Not a spec of land in sight.
Different color shades of orange, purples, greens, and yellows whirlpool mix with-in the sky above me before cascading down that beautiful light blue background.
Reflecting a magnificent piece of picture-perfect artwork off the ocean surface; a masterpiece, only Mother Nature could create.
Warm salty breeze’s whistle through random shapes of iron through-out the rig deck. Corners, corridors, pipes, and windows create sounds around every corner.
My bright green eyes stare over the edge of a 34,000sq foot oil platform; 80ft above the water.
Leaning on the railing I take a deep breath. The scent and taste of ocean on my nose and tongue can’t be denied. I sip iced coffee from my Yeti.
This is the most beautiful scenery, feeling, a single human could ever fathom. It’s Perfect. I feel. Almost, at home.
“In my eyes. I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.”
Suddenly, I witness dolphins jumping and playing in the circles of light casted on the ocean by the rig’s enormous spotlights. Smiling, I sip my coffee once again.
I’m one of five commercial divers working maintenance on the rig. We’ve been onsite for almost two weeks. Diving to working depths between 70-100ft every day. Has certainly taken its tolls. We’re all tired and temperamental. The weather has been particularly rough. Making is very difficult to swim and work with-in the Gulfs high currents.
My body is stressed out. Ake’s, and pains in places I’ve never thought possible. But we’re commercial divers. We go deeper, harder, and longer than any other trade.
Never bent, cracked, or broken by adversity. If anything, we feed off the challenges and fears of the unpredictable depths below. We thrive, with love in our hearts. Believing we’re here for a reason, blessed by God with the courage. Until the job is complete.
Supplying millions of people with the opportunity to live an unburdened life of happiness on planet Earth by consuming oil.
“If we die. We die.”
We’re a very rare species of human if you ask me.
“I’m built different.”
Battling underwater. Through pitch black, high current, confined, dangerous environments with limited oxygen. Not to mention the countless number of deadly sea creatures which call beneath the waves their home.
