Before the story, I need to make a small announcement. We're no longer otn Santa Cruz. We've moved yesterday to Isabella. More about this later. And now, Part 2 of Adventure and the broken Anchor.

Part 2... The next morning we awoke bright and early. This is, probably, because we never slept. I tried to sleep, but Kathy kept waking me up to tell me that we really needed a stern anchor.

We got dressed and hailed one of the many water taxis in Galapagos. There was another American couple and a British guy already in the taxi as we boarded. Kathy quickly exchanged "Hello's" as we sat down. "Whew!" Kathy exclaimed. "We just had a horrible night sleep. Our stern anchor line broke." I tried to look at the bottom of the boat in order to hide my shame. The man, who was with his wife, quickly responded: "Do you have chain tied to the anchor?" Kathy quickly replied. "No. We..." (Meaning me) "...didn't even have the rode tied to a shackle." The guy was nodding his head in agreement with Kathy. "Do you guys have a float tied to the anchor?" I couldn't take it anymore.

I got snotty. "No. I didn't have a float tied to the anchor." The guy apparently didn't pick up on how annoyed I was. "You should have a float on your stern anchor and some chain." He was rolling now. "Yes, yes." I was really annoyed now. Thanks for the great information. This guy should be writing books, I thought. He's really helpful.

"How are you going to get it?" the British guy asked concerned. "We're going to town to hire a diver." "Oh! We'll I'm an excellent free diver. If you need any help, I can probably retrieve it for you. I'm free later this afternoon." Great. I had some young good looking free diver guy trying to make me look bad now.

The reader may be wondering why I just didn't try to free dive for the anchor myself. Well there were a couple of reasons: one, the area behind our boat is a major traffic area - I didn't want to be hit; and two, the water was way too murky. I'd just be wasting my time.

Kathy was enjoying watching me suffer. "Honey. Maybe we should wait for him to get our anchor. It would save us the time and effort of getting a diver." "No, it's okay. We don't want to be any trouble." I tired to sound nice, but my upper lip was bleeding now. I was hoping he wouldn't notice. "Alright then," he said in his "fancy" British accent, "Just let me know if you change your mind." Huh! I said to myself, don't be waitin' by the phone, buddy.

Kathy and I stopped at the first dive shop into town. The man at the desk spoke English and we began our strategic negotiations.

"We need you to find our anchor." I said, "The line broke last night." He sat back in his chair with his hands folded in his lap as he absorbed this new information. He was using the new international sizing-up stare. "You have an anchor?" "Yes. The line broke." "You're on a boat?" "Yes. We're on a sailboat." "And you lost your anchor?" "Si!" I attempted to switch languages to make the information more clear. We didn't seem to be getting anywhere fast. He looked confused and made grimacing faces. I new that each new grimace was going to cost me more. "Is it a heavy anchor?" he asked. "No," still using my limited Spanish, "Esta chico. I... necessito..." I gave up and switched to English "...to retie the... line." I switched back to Spanish. "Finito!" "Yes, yes. I understand." I asked his name because I knew the Spanish phrase for that. Enrique told me that he'd do it for 80 bucks. We told him thank you, but the anchor was only worth 80 dollars. He quickly caved and said 50. We had a deal.

Enrique told us to come back in 1 hour, so Kathy and I went to fill our water jugs. "See. This is going to be easy. Our anchor will be retied, no problem."

Kathy just scoffed, "We're paying way too much. It's a 20 dollar job. You're a horrible negotiator."

Our taxi driver took us to Aqualuz, one of the local water distributors. We noticed that they had 5 gallon bottles, so we grabbed an additional 20 gallons.

After an hour, we dropped off the water bottles at the dock. Kathy guarded the water bottles, as I ran to get the diver.

Enrique was getting dressed when I got there. It turns out that he was going to find the anchor. He came to the dock with me wearing his full dive gear: wet suit, BCD, tank, and boots. I told him that we had some water bottles that we needed to take back to the boat and he offered to help. I grabbed one of the seven water bottles and headed for our waiting water taxi. When I went to retrieve the next bottle, Enrique was right behind me carrying two of the water bottles. Great, I thought, he's one of "those" guys.

I quickly ran past Kathy, who was carrying a water container, to get the next two water bottles. If Enrique could do it, then so could I. Only... I couldn't.

"Come on Honey!" Kathy exclaimed, "You can do it!" She was smiling as she saw the grunts and heavy breathing. I had moved the two water bottles only a few feet before giving up. I looked around and the whole dock was watching me. I lowered my head and picked up one water bottle.

Once we arrived at Adventure I began to brief Enrique. "This is the rode. The anchor is somewhere back there." I was pointing past the stern of the boat. The wind was blowing just right and the anchor had to be somewhere 75 feet back. Enrique only needed to take the rode, pull it tight and dive. It was that simple.

The water was very murky though. Three was a large swell coming into the bay. Enrique dove into the water and quickly disappeared from sight. I sat on the stern and counted the seconds. It'll only take him 6 minutes to find it, I told myself.

Casey began to empty our water containers into Adventure. She called me from the bow of the boat. "Dad! The diver's up here. I see his bubbles." Hmm, I thought. I'm sure that he understood my directions. Why is he at the bow? Enrique surfaced 5 minutes later and asked if he was at the stern. "No, you were at the bow." "Oh... The water's really murky."

Kathy came out and evaluated the situation. "Do you think he knows what he's doing?" "Sure," I said trying to mask my shaken'd confidence, "He's a pro. He'll find it." "Whatever." Kathy walked away. I was starting to worry that he wouldn't find the anchor. He couldn't even find the stern. I was nervous; I'd never hear the end of it if he came up empty. I could hear it now, "You lost the anchor and then you paid a diver 50 bucks, and he didn't find squat. You should have put a float on the anchor. Blah, blah, blah..."

After 10 more minutes Enrique found the anchor. Great! Only one problem: the rode was too short and he dropped it. I quickly gave him an additional 15 feet. He disappeared under the water. After 10 minutes it was clear that he'd lost the anchor. I kept thinking, "A bearing! You need to take bearings when you surface." Then I remembered that I'd failed to take a bearing when he had surfaced. I decided to cut him some slack.

After 15 minutes he surfaced. Enrique gave me a thumbs-up! I was so excited. I smugly shouted down below, as if I never had any doubt, "Kathy, it's all fixed!"

My new friend (and hero) Enrique and I chatted as we waited for a water taxi. He explained that there was a dive boat going to Floreana the next day and that we should all go. I explained that we didn't have any dive experience and he told me it was no problem. He'd give our entire family a free 50 dollar lesson.

After Enrique left I told Kathy the great news. "We can go diving at Floreana tomorrow. It'll be great." Kathy was caught off guard. I moved in for the kill. "Enrique's going to give us a free lesson today. He said it was easy. If we take the free lesson, it'll pay for the anchor."

Kathy didn't understand my logic. "What?"

I yelled past Kathy; I needed more support, and fast. "Hey girls! How'd you like to go diving?"

We arrived at Enrique's office later that day and hashed out the details. He quickly explained how all of the dive stuff works. We were all really scared. I tried to put on a brave face for the girls.

"See girls, you just breathe into the thing and it's all easy." Enrique waited patiently for me to finish. He was smiling and nodding his head slowly from side to side. I guess I was holding the wrong thing.

We went to the dive boat to practice. This required us to walk in full dive gear. I felt like a bad dude walking down the dock. That's right. We're going diving - make no mistake.

We got to the dive boat after hailing a water taxi. Enrique was in a hurry; it was getting dark fast.

"What is your name?" he asked me. "Sean!" I said strong and clear. "James." I didn't know where he got that from. "Sean." "Jon." "Sean, like Sean Connery." "Oh! Sean." It always works. Only no one calls me Sean after that. I become Mr. Connery.

I jumped in the water and started breathing. It was really neat. I was excited to show the kids how easy it was so they wouldn't be nervous.

Enrique told me that one of the techniques that I had to master was clearing my mask. He explained that I needed to fill my mask with water and then proceeded to show me process for clearing it.

I dove under the water and filled my mask. I was feeling very confident and was excited to complete the first step. I then lifted my head back and attempted to clear the mask. I lifted my head out of the water. My mask was full. I quickly tried to drain it before Enrique noticed. Kathy and the girls were laughing at me, though, and blew my cover.

"That's good," he said. You didn't panic. I kept thinking that he was humoring me. I tried again. As I lifted my head out of the water I tried to again conceal that my mask was full to the brim with water. My eyes were stinging as I opened them in the salt water. "Did I do it right?" I was hoping no one would notice that the mask was full. They did.

I tried again, and again, and again, and again. I just wasn't getting it. Each time I surfaced the girls would laugh at me. I was starting to lose confidence in myself. Each time Enrique would try to console me. "It's okay." I wanted so desperately to tell him that it wasn't my fault. I'm just a little guy. That this was the reason I majored in Computer Science.

It was then that Kathy said, "You're breathing out of your nose, right?" The whole time I had been trying to blow the air bubbles from the regulator in my mouth to the inside of the mask. I was able to clear my mask the very next time. It's the small details. I was a bad dude again!

The girls quickly mastered their skills, after witnessing all of my failures. We were to meet at the dock the next morning at 7:30 for our trip to Floreana. We were all scared, but excited. Our very first dive trip!

Next, the exciting conclusion...