ABW June 2017

THE BIG FLU
Gone in 15 seconds
Words and
Photographs
by DAVE
MCCRAKEN
Message from Dave Mack, 17 December,
2016 4:00 PM, Philippine Islands:
I am talking to you through my brother Tim because
my Laptop is not working any longer.
My underwater exploration boat got sucked into a
giant whirlpool several nights ago, flipped over and
sunk all within 15 seconds. This was 70 miles out in
the South China Sea from the
Island of Mindoro. My boatmate,
Jasmin, and I were asleep
and actually went down with the
boat. Both of us managed to get
free of the boat underwater and
swim to the surface.
This underwater exploration
boat was one of my most prized
possessions. It was a 20-foot
Aluminum cuddy cabin model
from Australia with a new
4-stroke 200HP Suzuki for
power. The deck was sealed
tight so no water could get down
into the hull. Two brand new bilge
pumps were down there with
automatic float switches. We had
run hundreds upon hundreds of miles in this boat
and never experienced any danger of sinking, even
in heavy seas.
While space was limited, through a lot of investment,
this rather small boat provided nearly everything you
will find on a large yacht, including a scuba compressor
to fill tanks and a full time electric freezer to store food
I’m estimating that
it was around 9 pm
when I felt the boat
leaning strongly to
the port (left) side.
and the fish we caught. Every system on the boat was
working exactly as it was supposed to.
Jasmin and I have been doing extended adventures from
Subic down around the Palawan chain of islands for 4 years.
We have had lots of fun, and a few close calls running across
vast reaches of water in a rather small boat. By problems, I
mean the weather turning bad on us. We got caught out in
12-foot breaking seas one time. But that’s another story…
Nearly every problem we have
encountered while doing these
underwater search projects for
the past several years have had
to do with severe winds, usually
in the total darkness.
Though we have seen a number
of very powerful whirlpools out
on the South China Sea, they are
usually associated with strong
tidal flows which rush around
the larger islands – though we
did see a very large whirlpool
one time out in the middle of
nowhere with no visible reason for
it being there.
Even though I have seen them, nothing in my life
experience alerted me into the concern that we would
encounter a powerful whirlpool while at anchor. This is
something that would not happen when taking shelter
in a protected bay.
Since the seas were mostly calm on this trip, we had made
the 200-mile voyage down to our destination on a single
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