Wave Dancer

I have also been reading "No Safe Harbour - the Tragedy of the Dive Ship Wave Dancer" by John Burnworth.  He was a diver on the ship that was moored beside the Wave Dancer when the hurricane threw her across Big Creek Harbour (in Belize) and sunk her, killing 20 people: seventeen members of the Richmond Dive Club and three crew members.

What is especially tragic about it is that no-one else died in Big Creek Harbour that day, even those on the other boat.  No-one should have died.  Apparently the Captain could have taken the advice to run the boat into the mangrove swamps, but didn't.  The Belizean crew realised the danger, but the Captain was not a local.  I don't think he had been through a hurricane before, and I suppose its hard to imagine the power and devastation.

I presume that would have worked as the hurricane threw the boat at the mangroves and a couple of them survived because they were thrown off the boat into the mangroves before it turned over.   So presumably, all that would have happened, had they only been there to start with, is that the boat would have been driven further into the swamp but it would have been held upright. 

The boat may have been lost, but it was lost anyway, along with twenty lives.

The survivors, including the Captain, were very brave in the aftermath, swimming about in that storm trying to rescue people - some divers even going inside the upside down boat.  Which is probably one of the most dangerous things a diver can do.

I have been on so many dive trips with dive club members - mostly American too - that I felt almost as if I knew all the people on the trip - knew how lighthearted it would all be - how much fun everyone would have -  how they would talk about the diving in the bar in the evening. And then, all in a few minutes, most of them were gone.  One couple had two young sons.

I hope they have a wonderful awakening ahead of them when the earth is restored to Paradise.  We will still find the power of nature awe-inspiring, but it will no longer hurt us.  If you remember, Jesus, as the King of Jehovah's kingdom, had the authority to calm the storm.


Managed a totter to Waitrose yesterday, supervised by Captain B.  And made us lunch and supper.  And studied. Oh and had a long talk with Audrey and short one with Carol, my last householder, about caterpillars, but that was about it for yesterday.  Paid for my dizzy exploits in Waitrose today and have spent too much of the day lying on the bed trying to reduce the pain in my knees.

Some of the caterpillars that I discussed with Carol have now moved in and are in a caterpillar nursery on the balcony. Apparently they will turn into beautiful - and definitely NOT carpet - moths.  I must get some spiderweb and start knitting lots of little bootees for my new batch of children.