Chris Hackworthy, left, Billy Akan, and Dave Gill returned to the chamber where they lived for 35 days at the Delaware Aqueduct Shaft in Dutchess County, N.Y. (Photo: Alan Zale for The New York Times) We landlubbers take a lot for granted, like being able to watch a DVD or shoot a Nerf basketball through a little plastic hoop.
But for the past month, six divers trying to fix an aqueduct that delivers half of the city’s drinking water and has been leaking 20 million gallons a day did without these and many other comforts. To enable them to spend hours each day under 700 feet of water repairing one of the aqueduct’s valves, they had to live in a sealed 24-foot pressurized tank and breathe air that was 97.5 percent helium, a critical part of a process known as saturation diving. A team of more than 30 workers cooked their meals, washed their clothes and passed newspapers and other entertainment through an airlock.
The construction divers, who work for Global Diving and Salvage of Seattle and were hired by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, were featured in an article in The Times last month. According to many e-mail messages, readers were fascinated not just with the mammoth task facing the city as it tries to fix the aqueduct, but also with the divers who live in isolation for such long stretches.
Freed from the tank after six days of being gradually weaned off helium, the divers said in interviews that the biggest relief was just being able to talk to each other normally, without sounding like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
“Being understood breathing helium is difficult,” said Chris Hackworthy, 49, of Kalispell, Mont. “You keep conversation to a minimum.”
Mark Hintz, their supervisor, who also worked in underwater construction for 20 years, said that divers “develop key phrases” to make it easier to be understood.
Helium not only warps vocal cords, it also deadens taste buds. So the divers use a lot of Tabasco, salsa and jalapenos. Helium also ruins DVD players. Which Mr. Hackworthy discovered when his portable player went dead after one and a half movies.
The helium did not, however, distort MP3 players, which the divers usually listened to via headphones. Occasionally, the players were hooked up to speakers so the divers could share their tunes.
The foam Nerf basketball was another challenge. The divers aimed it at the hoop, but “you throw the ball and the helium doesn’t let it go where you wanted it to go,” said Mr. Hackworthy. Darts, he suggested, might be a better game for the next dive.
Time passes slowly when you cannot walk outside for a breath of fresh air, watch television or shake hands with anyone but your fellow divers. Contact with the outside world was limited: to send e-mail, the divers wrote messages on paper and had assistants type them onto a computer.
Dave Gill, a 44-year-old Californian originally from Perth, Australia, said he plowed through eight books.
“Anything that takes you out of the system,” he said. “Mostly spy thrillers. No diving books.” Mr. Gill joked that none of his four children — or anyone they married — would be allowed to be a diver.
You might think that after a month working underwater, the divers would want to stay away from anything wet. But Billy Akan, a 27-year-old from Seattle, said he was going to use his vacation to go sailing and skiing.
Mr. Gill said he would probably have a list of chores waiting for him, including, “dragging the weeds out of the pond” at home.
Mr. Hackworthy, who started diving because “I got tired of eating dust” in Montana, was heading for the hills there.
“That’s where I go to get my head on straight,” he said. “Hunting elk.”
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