Back home here in California one day I had a bunch of guys out on my boat near Elk , 2 guest divers and a tender. My boat, the Big Belly was a 36' military landing craft, and the gear box dropped out of it, I decided to swim it in myself to Navarro. It was a couple of miles so it took a while. When we got to the shore I got washed around the other side of some rocks , I was tired and could have bought the farm-- the guys thought sure I was dead by the time I got to them. So did I .
Up in Oregon I almost got drowned by a whale once. She was flirting with our boat . She'd roll over and show us her you know what, you could have thrown a 55 ga. drum in it.-- Well I decided to jump in-- (the water that is) and , just like a woman , she changed her mind and sounded. It caused a whirlpool that sucked me down 30 or 40 feet before I kicked free. At least there was warm water in my wet suit afterwards.
Also up in Oregon my tender and I worked too long in a protected area and a storm blew up. We had to cross the channel from the reef to Port Orford in 20' seas and 80 mph gusts. They were breaking over the windshield as we headed into them and I couldn't see to run the 32' aluminum boat. It was outfitted for gill netting and there was a steering station up on the bow so I got up there with my wet suit and mask and was able to control the boat in a very slow going journey back. We would climb these steep seas and then drop of the back sides. It was like jumping off a 20' haystack and we were airborn alot of the time. When we made the dogleg into port it was a good thing I had some surfing experience. There was a Coast Guard helicopter following us trying to make radio contact as my friends had called them when we weren't in. We were too busy to answer. The boat took 3 days to repair as a lot of the ribs had separated. That was no fun.