Captain Could Not Control His Boat

Dear Undercurrent,

It was Easter morning on April 5, and we had just finished our morning dive at Tiputa Pass in Rangiroa, French Polynesia, with Six Passengers Diving.

We returned to the dock, and two minutes later, one of the other two boats came back in a flurry of concerned activity. There had been an accident. It soon became clear that it had been a propeller accident, and there was someone with a major injury. The staff scurried around in a not-super-organized manner, and we realized that the injury was grave and that there were two people involved. We offered to assist and were asked to stay out of the way. Understandable. EMTs were called, and then gendarmes arrived.

The two injured divers were German, and a friend with them witnessed it and narrowly avoided injury herself. We learned that the boat captain had somehow been pitched out of the boat in the Pass by a wave, and the boat, with no one at the helm, continued on and ran over two divers on the surface awaiting pickup. We saw the captain of that boat collapse in shock, needing emergency assistance. My husband helped carry one of the stretchers to the ambulance.

What struck us was that they, at the dive shop, were not prepared for a true emergency. First aid was administered, but precious minutes were lost while they sorted out treatment and stabilization. Both divers survived, but one had his leg amputated, according to news reports, and the other had a double fracture.

We obviously did not go out for our second dive of the day, but the next day we saw dive instructors doing Intro to Scuba Courses at our hotel. It does not seem that the shop paused for protocol review. That said, the dive shop continued operating as if nothing had happened. Three lives forever changed.

A few key takeaways for me:

I'll never take a dive trip around boats or sharks without a tourniquet in my gear bag that gets on the boat with me.

I'll check for operational radios on boats and distress code, regardless of the language spoken. I'll ask if boats, RIBS, or other types have a kill switch in case something happens to the captain or boat driver.

Sara Shoemaker
San Diego, CA

Undercurrent comments:

We learned from news sources that after the Six Passengers' captain went overboard, his boat began to spin in circles and would rush back toward the divers about every eight seconds. Twenty-four-year-old Brian Pethke required multiple blood and plasma transfusions and had his lower right leg amputated before he was flown back to Germany after a three-week hospital stay in Tahiti. He recently described himself as endlessly grateful for his survival and is now recovering well.

It was an accident that should never have happened. All boats fitted with outboard motors have an emergency engine cut-out switch to which the boat driver can attach himself with a lanyard. Should he fall out of the boat, the lanyard flips the switch, cuts off the power, the propeller stops spinning, and the boat stops. Unfortunately, it's rare to see a boat driver connect himself to the power switch. For example, reader Louie Tonry (Flower Mound, TX) told us, "In my 40 years of diving, I have never seen a boat captain with a kill-switch lanyard."

I learned my own lanyard lesson the hard way when the steering cable of my boat unexpectedly parted at speed, and the torque of the single propeller swung the engine over violently, putting the boat into a sharp turn, flipping the two of us in the boat into the water while it continued to turn in circles.

Luckily, we were alone in the open ocean, and neither of us was injured. It made a chapter in my book Amazing Diving Stories.

Always make sure the driver of your boat (with an outboard motor) has taken the precaution of attaching the emergency engine cut-out lanyard.

John Bantin