Quote:
Originally Posted by Spear CR
I read a little about Whip in the book, but it didn't go into detail about the situation.
Rok, tell us what happened. I think a lot of people might benefit from it. If you don't think so, I understand.
Roger
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In this thread I already told the story of what happened to Whip. But I'll give you all the details this time.
We were on a bouble decker boat called the Deep C, alot of bad things happened on this boat.
We were on a 3 day rodeo and this was the third day and last dive of the trip.
Whip had just won King Spearfisherman of the rodeo 2 weeks prior. I was videoing several of the divers when they wold come up and all kinds of stupid things, just having fun.
Right before this rig, I was filming Whip, I said something on cameral like "you gonna win this rodeo too" . Whip was shoving a sandwich down his mouth telling me he's not sure but he's trying. Whip was as hardcore as they get. I had brought 24 scuba tanks on the boat and I was the only one left on the boat with any air at all. I tank dove to the bottom, 80' with the 800 psi. I still had left. I shot a 45 lb. black drum for the rodeo. The ****ed up thing is while I was looking down for fish, Whip was right above my head unconsciensly, drowning and I never had a clue.
Whip skin dove the rig shooting a huge barracuda. The fish must have fought pretty hard because we found the fish wrapped around a rig leg at 50 ft. But we couldn't find Whip. He must have shot to the surface and hit his head on a pipe knocking himself out and sending him back to the bottom.
3 days later 8-10 divers went out back to that rig. They searched the bottom for him. Val Rudolfovich a commercial diver with the Sea Tigers said if Whip drowned, he's on the bottom of that rig. They did their first dive and then were eating a little lunch. They had 2 man teams with a rope inbetween them. Nobody say Whip but they did say the water was very clear on the bottom of that rig. SS 189.
While they were eating their sandwiches, they smelled this smell. Someone said "Who Farted", they looked at the side of the boat and Whip was floating back to the boat, mask on, and snorkel out of the water. Terry jumped in and they floated him into the body bag. He had a large gash in the top of his head.
I still have the speargun and a few of his personal belongings today. I gave the video tape to his wife, we all put beers in his casket. Whip was one of a kind.