Keeping your cool!

I love putting on a fall arrest harness at work. Each time I do I am reminded of an experience. One that tested my management control when things go really bad.

I was working 50 feet underwater on surface supplied air. This being a compressor pumping air down to my helmet allowing me to stay under water for extended periods of time. The airline was taped to a ?” polypropylene rope and attached to the “D” ring just above my “bailout bottle” (small air supply that gave me about two or three breathes of air in the event the compressor above shut down).

As I worked all my attention was on my job, not on the limited visibility environment, or the current that swept against my body, or even my accelerated breathing as a result of the strenuous work I was performing. I had to remain focused on task to ensure the job was done right. It was two hours into the job when it happened.

Now for those of you who have put on fall arrest harnesses before, I want you to imagine doing so again, and then attached to the “D” ring on your back is a ?” rope 250 feet in length. Now take the other end of that rope and attach it to the bumper of a pickup truck and go to work (Not a good Idea right and definitely against all fall protection regulations), Now imagine a driver gets into that truck and steps on the gas full throttle. Within seconds that coil of 250 feet of rope will have reached its end with you along with it.

Well that’s exactly what happened, except there was no pickup truck, but instead the tender on the boat above saw that the boat was drifting slightly. So, in his wisdom he fired up the engine and kicked it into reverse to straighten it out. But by doing so ran over my 250-foot dive line and sucked it into the 36” propeller which was now rotating at 3600 RPM’s

One cannot describe properly the sensation of being ripped from the ocean floor backwards, nor can I properly describe the surge of thought I was having knowing that the only way that could have happened was by having my dive line caught in that prop. In the milliseconds that passed, I hoped with all my heart to suck water into my helmet, proving the line had been cut and that I was not going to become chopped into pieces, because in reality, 250 feet at 3600 RPM is not that far away.

I was literally feet away from the blade when the engine stopped! I dropped my 75 lb weight belt and swam over to the edge of the boat. There I took off my bailout bottle and left it floating in the water. I then climbed up the ladder to board the main deck and took off my helmet and went straight into the galley. Pouring a cup of coffee, I then went back out onto the deck where the entire crew stood all in complete fear for what I was about to say.

I sat down on a bucket, took a sip of coffee and looked at them and these words came out of my mouth:

“Gentlemen, please……don’t ever do that again”.

Keeping your cool when the S&%T hits the fan defines you not as a leader, or a manager, but as a person!