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24 hours at the mercy of the sea
For Olivanzo Arnolda, last Sunday began like any other working day at recreational dive centre Colombo Divers, based in Mount Lavinia.
Arnolda, a diving instructor and guide, was to take three clients out to sea – to a point 17 kilometres off the coast. Their destination was the “Colombo Car Wreck”, a name given to a Panamanian cargo ship that sank in Sri Lankan waters in the 1980s ( “car wreck” refers to a car chassis found on the deck of the ship).
Arnolda’s companions were French national Jermann Patrice, 38, and locals Hakid Ali Hussein, 35, and Mohamed Asamal Iqbal, 31.
Olivanzo Arnolda
After exploring the shipwreck, the three guest divers and their guide resurfaced only to found themselves at a distance from the dive boat.
They were concerned, naturally. What they did not know was that they would be spending the next 24 hours in the water, hoping desperately to be rescued. That morning, when the diving team left shore at 8.30 am, they had noticed an unusually strong current on the surface. During the 35 minutes of their dive, the current had become so strong that when the divers tired to swim toward the dive boat, they found themselves being dragged back no matter how hard they tried.
The 35-year-old diving instructor Arnolda had previously led dives in far worse weather conditions, but last Sunday was different. The divers had drifted some 500 metres away from the boat and the boat crew could not see them.
“We followed the usual procedure and set up a surface marker buoy to indicate our position,” Arnolda told the Sunday Times. “I think the boatmen could not see us because there was a strong wind and the waves were high. We kept drifting away from the boat.”
Arnolda tried swimming sideways to avoid the current, but his attempt was unsuccessful. “Every time I looked at the boat, it was getting smaller and smaller. I knew I couldn’t make it. And when I turned around, I couldn’t see the other three divers.”
Towards evening, Arnolda found himself close to the Mount Lavinia outer harbour. He was praying he would be spotted by search vessels or ships anchored in the harbour. Arnolda remained in the sea throughout the night. His next hope was that he would be spotted and rescued by a ship or boat setting out at dawn. Unfortunately, the current drew him away from the harbour and out to sea.
“I saw ships and they seemed to be sailing away. Later I realised it was just me drifting away from the ships. I lost sight of land.” One ship passed by fairly close, and Arnolda waved a drifting coconut branch he had found, but no one spotted him.
At about 10 in the morning, Arnolda’s hopes returned when he heard the sound of a motor. It was a fishing boat. He waved the palm leaf and the fisherman spotted him and picked him up. It was now 10.20 am. The palm leaf and two seagulls that were circling the water above Arnolda had alerted the fishermen to the presence of something alive or dead in the water.
“As soon as I was hauled aboard, I entered my location on the GPS. We then headed to Panadura and informed the Navy,” Arnolda said.
Meanwhile, the other three divers had stayed together, sleeping in spells and drifting through the night. They woke up at about 6.30 am the next day and saw a bamboo tree floating in the water. It was about four metres long. “We tied an emergency sign to one end of the tree and held it upright,” Arnolda said.Eventually, they were spotted by a fishing vessel off the coast of Dehiwala.
“We were lucky the water was warm, or we could have got hypothermia,” said Jermann Patrice, who works at an international garment manufacturing company in Avissawella.
Like Arnolda, the other three divers had stayed afloat with the help of their inflatable buoyancy devices.
Although no one suffered major injuries, the four divers sustained minor physical trauma, including muscle cramps and fatigue.
“We stayed together and helped when anyone felt exhausted or developed cramps,” Patrice said. “We were not hungry, but we were very thirsty. At one point I was about to gulp down some seawater, but did not because I knew it would make my throat dry and cause greater thirst.”
In such situations, all kinds of thoughts enter your head, Patrice said. “You think about life and the people you love,” he said. “It’s a chance to think about everything that concerns you. While you hope to be rescued, you also think about death. We were lucky. It was our lucky day.”
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