Under the Channel
Diving under La Manche Channel is a very spectacular achievement. This 36 km is a dream of numerous extreme swimmers, but nobody before dived this distance. The challenges are of both technological and human nature. First you need a heavy duty scooter that can propel you the whole distance. Second, even with strongest scooter, it’s still a massive distance, that will take a lot of time and produce huge decompression. In Achim’s case it was 8 hours of diving, and 2 and half hours of decompression at the end of the dive. Even the best insulation can’t provide comfort as long - it’s the fight with cold, fatigue and fear.
No 9 to 5 job
The book starts with this famous dive, but it’s only one of 50 stories from life of Achim. All together present the story of his life and his personality to the reader. He describes his childhood adventures, which are beyond imagination of the average office workers. Achim never wanted such job. He left to USA without finishing school, and worked there in dive center. After returning to Germany, he tried, under big pressure of his family, to start a career in insurance company. However, it was trying without conviction, and soon he thrown his resignation and left to be bound with water forever.
No job is dirty enough
Living from diving in cold water country is a huge challenge, but Achim has done everything to make this possible. Literally everything. He describes his most interesting adventures:
diving in concrete A big stone got stuck in a huge concrete boiler, and when all attempts to remove it, the factory called the diver. It was very dangerous, because to remove the stone, Achim needed to dive in fluid concrete. This dive permanently damaged his suit, and it was a near hit for his health - concrete is much denser than water, which turned 8 meted deep dive into decompression dive - and caused decompression sickness.
death cow You shouldn’t swim in water reservoir used by water plant, because you can get sucked into the turbines and cut into pieces. Children learned it is schoold, but now the cows. One of those girls blocked the turbines, a case for Achim. However, when he was called, a lot of time passed since the accident. The cow smelled terribly, so after many hours spend on removing cow piece by piece, Achim needed to spend many hours in bath to feel cleaned after the adventure - and the diving suited landed in trash.
death rat soup Another job was about cleaning a sewer. Nobody would expect it being a clean job, but the reality was even worse than imagination, because the sewer was filled with death rats in advanced stage of decomposition.
chased by chainsaw That should be a routine job - removing old wooden pillars. But the pillars were too big to be moved. The solution - use compressed air powered chainsaw. Chainsaws are dangerous, but chainsaws that can move on its own after incidentally turning the on are a real nightmare. Murphy’s laws worked as expected, and Achim managed to avoid swimming killer chainsaw in the last second…
Do you hate your office job hard enough to take one of those jobs?
Some people don’t want to be rescued
Achim describes two different stories, on how some people don’t appreciate attempts to save their life.
First is a story of a man, who wanted to do technical diving course by Achim. The man was in poor physical condition, so Achim honestly told him, that first he need to work on his fitness, and then take the course, because he has restrictive entry conditions for candidates. The man reacted rudely and went away. He successfully found a teacher that doesn’t care about fitness and made his course, and they died on first solo dive. Achim learned it, when he was sued by the widow - which claimed, her husband wouldn’t die if he was trained for Achim. Which is exactly the reason Achim denied him training - because he doesn’t train people who are not fit enough to dive wihout severe risk to their lives. Some people don’t understand, that someone tries to save them…
Second is a story of 3 divers, that messed up the wreck dive, and left their collegue inside. Achim has managed to take him out, which was dangerous - because the trapped diver was in panic - the reason his collegeus has broken attempt to rescue him. You would expect someone rescued by a stranger to be grateful for life. Well, not in that case. He didn’t even say ’thank you’. And his collegues weren’t even slightly ashamed. For some people, ’thank you’ are 2 words too much…
Left in water
Achim was left in water after the dive to Baron Gautch. He was with doubles, he informed the captain that he plans decompression dive, so everything should be clear. But it wasn’t. Some people are too lazy to count and the don’t notice a missing diver - especially if it was the only guy with doubles. The wreck is 13 km from coast, which would be a long swim. Achim waited patiently, but his mind was playing tricks on him - he imagined, that the rescue will never come (although the dive spot was visited daily) or big sharks (not that part of the sea). Finally, on the evening, the dive center owner came to rescue. You could imagine, as a minimum, getting a huge voucher as apology, but not this time. Achim was charged double for the dive - because boat made 2nd trip to rescue him. As he concluded, it’s quite logical move in the world of assholes…
Conclusion
It’s a fascinating book, showing the life of an extraordinary diver. It shows, that extraordinary achievements are a result of intense work and a very special mindset, and sacrifying everything to your goal. Read it if you can, and watch Achim’s YouTube channel.