They were some of the best divers, but
January 10, 2005
Jonathan Ancer
Dave Shaw looked me up and down. "You looked after us, we'll look after you," he said. "Tomorrow morning, you're in."
"You'll be the only journalist allowed on the site. We'll tell the others to go get stuffed."
His eyes twinkled as he threw his head back and chuckled. It was raw Aussie humour.
There was a quiet confidence about him. Perhaps he was a little cocky.
This was on Friday afternoon. Less than 16 hours later, Andries van Zyl, owner of the farm where Boesmansgat is located, drove up in his bakkie, and said: "The sh*t has hit the fan."
The bunch of journalists gathered at the site looked puzzled. Van Zyl shook his head sadly.
"Dave's gone."
I felt like I had been hit between the eyes with a hammer.
On Friday, Dave - the man who set a world record by diving to 271m on October 28 - was focusing his energy on Saturday's mission to retrieve the body of Deon Dreyer.
Dreyer disappeared during a deep dive a decade ago and his body was lying in darkness at the bottom of Boesmansgat, the now infamous freshwater cave at Danielskuil in the Northern Cape.
Dave, an Australian-born airline pilot living in Hong Kong, had vowed to try to bring Deon's body to the surface so that the family could begin to heal.
I had written a few articles about the recovery attempt and been in e-mail contact with Dave, who had tried to explain the complex system he used to breathe underwater.
He said he used a rebreather (where he recycled the air he breathes), which, he boasted, was a more efficient way of deep diving.
He wanted to push the technological envelope.
His rebreather, one of only 26 in the world, allowed him not just to reach great depths but gave him a few minutes to explore while he was there.
Open-circuit divers, who have to lug huge gas cylinders with them, must begin going up as soon as they reach a great depth.
Dave said it was precisely because he was exploring at the bottom of Boesmansgat that he stumbled upon Dreyer's body on October 28.
He had liked the series of articles I had written, which is why he had had invited me to be the only journalist to document the historic dive.
The police, however, had other ideas. They declared the site a crime zone and no one was allowed in - not even the mayor of Danielskuil. No amount of pleading helped.
"Rules is rules," said the stern-looking police officer at the gate.
She did promise, however, to keep the media updated about the dive's progress as news filtered through from the cave about 5km away.
A group of officials, who had also been denied entry, planned to sing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika when Deon's body was brought out in a mortuary van.
The morning had started off on an emotional note for Deon's parents, Theo and Marie Dreyer.
Their first visitor was Kallie Anley, Deon's school buddy, who bore a striking resemblance to the dead diver.
When Marie saw Kallie, she started to cry.
"People used to think we were twins," said Kallie, who had made the four-hour trip from Bloemfontein so that he could be there when they brought Deon out.
Everybody was saying "when"; nobody was saying "if".
The truth is that although Dave had emphasised often that the dive was an attempt to bring the body out, no one seemed to doubt that the mission would be successful.
The journalists outside the entrance were feeling jovial. We had received a brief of the dive plan, and joked about how we had already written our stories. All we needed was someone with rank to give a quote confirming the dive's success.
The introduction to the article I was working on was: "On Saturday, at 7.35am, after 10 years, two weeks and six days of lying in obscurity at the bottom of Boesmansgat, Deon Dreyer was brought to the surface."
Like everybody else, I had no doubt that the dive would be successful.
After all, the handpicked divers were among the best in the world. For two months the dive logistics had been carefully worked out. There were contingency plans, back-up plans and plan Bs.
The police had supported the dive in full force. Millions of rands had gone into making this happen.
And Dave, with a world record under his belt, was considered one of the greatest technical divers on the planet, if not the greatest.
At 6.03am the walkie-talkie belonging to the officer at the gate buzzed with muffled sounds.
The officer jerked her thumbs skywards.
"Dave's in the water. It's all going according to plan."
At 7.15 the officer again gave the thumbs-up sign - that was the final "it's all going according to plan" report.
At 8.29, when Deon's body was meant to be out, Andries van Zyl drove from the site in his bakkie. That's when he revealed that the "sh*t had hit the fan".
"Deon is not coming out. Neither is Dave."
If there were any doubts, these were put to rest at 9.57am when ashen-faced Commissioner Ben Groenewald of the national emergency police services came to tell us there would be a press conference at the town hall at noon.
"Things did not go according to plan," was all that he was prepared to say. His hands were shaking.
Just the day before, I had sat with Dave in a little shelter a few metres from the entrance of Boesmansgat, where his kit - wetsuit, fins, mask, rebreather and underwater computers - were spread out.
He was explaining why he wasn't a hero.
"I'm doing this so that the family can begin a new phase in their lives. I hope I succeed."
Dave said the most difficult part of the dive was the technical aspect - the gas mixtures.
"But I've thought it through and there's no problem. There's no emotion to it."
"If I make a mistake, the chances are that it's over."
How dangerous is deep diving?
Dave just shrugged.
"I can't give you an exact number, but there are a few deaths each year."
I had asked him if there would be another attempt to bring Deon back up if this one wasn't successful.
"I'm focusing on this dive. I'm quietly confident that we will be able to bring him up, but if we don't, I don't know."
Then it was time for him to clear his thoughts and concentrate on the dive.
