ST. THOMAS - Eric Lambert, 61, clasped a bag of two lobsters - a 2-pounder and a 4-pounder - against his chest for two hours as he bobbed in rough open water Sunday.
After two hours adrift, sometime about 12:30 p.m., the bag slipped from Lambert's hands and sank to the sea floor.
"My first reaction was to go and get it," Lambert said.
He was stranded about one mile southeast of Dog Island, far from where his dive began that morning off a friend's boat.
The bag and Lambert's weight belt felt heavier with time.
"You're bobbing and weaving," Lambert said. "It's not like you sit there."
His best friend C.C. Kraglo, a Coast Guard auxiliary member and an EMT, was on the phone calling everyone for rescue.
Lambert drifted southeast for three hours before a Coast Guard helicopter spotted him 1½ miles southeast of Dog Island.
Coast Guard helicopters, which are based in Aguadilla on Puerto Rico, take about 40 minutes to reach the U.S. Virgin Islands, said Coast Guard Spokesman Ricardo Castrodad.
The search by the U.S. Coast Guard, St. John Rescue and the National Park Service began about 11 a.m.
Lambert was smiling, waving and clutching a yellow flotation buoy in 6-foot seas when a St. John Rescue powerboat retrieved him about 1:30 p.m.
He knew his friend would find him.
"There was no way I wasn't going to be found," Lambert said. "I wasn't going to be a corpse on the beach."
When Lambert finished his solo dive to about 70 feet at 10:30 a.m. and resurfaced, he sounded his whistle, which Kraglo recognized before lifting the Swordmaster III's anchor, about 200-300 yards away.
Kraglo and his future son-in-law were in the Swordmaster III, which motored toward the diver.
"They were roaring right by me," Lambert said. "I thought: I guess they'll be back."
Lambert began listening for the motor's return. He raised the lobster snare and the yellow safety buoy, which divers call a sausage.
Lambert checked his position by looking south to French Cap Cay and north to St. John and the cays off of St. Thomas' eastern end.
He began to conserve energy.
"I thought: I'll just go ahead and start swimming," he said. "I'll just not kick hard."
He realized, however, that the current was dragging him away from the islands.
A sailboat appeared and came within 300 feet of Lambert, who sounded his whistle and waved.
"I did a long blast and a short blast," he said. "They just went on their merry way."
Then a powerboat approached within 30 feet, he said.
"They came roaring by. I was waving my two snares, sounding my whistle," he said.
Then the silence returned.
"I was just telling myself I should be mentally prepared," he said. "I could be out here all night."
He kept his thoughts positive and "mentally tuned," Lambert said.
"Well, I thought, obviously that wasn't who was supposed to find me," he said, referring to the powerboat.
About 15 minutes before the rescue boat arrived, Lambert was still listening for motors.
He heard a small plane overhead.
A rain cloud doused Frenchman's Cap Cay.
"Then I heard the chopper," he said. "I saw them way over there by Dog Island. They were doing a search pattern. Then they came roaring along the coast of St. John and went way outside. Then they circled back."
Lambert waved "like mad," he said, and the helicopter hovered just above him.
"Then, I saw a boat coming," Lambert said.
Lambert was not hurt, but his legs were cramped and he was thirsty.
The rescuers asked him a series of questions while they transported him to Cruz Bay to reconnect with the Swordmaster III.
The searchers had hustled to rescue the diver before nightfall, and the snare and buoy helped the searchers identify Lambert, Castrodad said.
"He was just happy to be rescued," said Training Officer Bob Malacarne, of St. John Rescue.
"I just sat there," Lambert said. "I kept saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm just a tough old guy.'"
One question stayed in Lambert's mind: What would he have done differently?
"There is nothing I would do differently," he said.
Lambert said the search most traumatized his friend's designated spotter on the Swordmaster III.
"He is not very boat-savvy," Lambert said. "He didn't know you can't look away for a second."
Lambert has been diving for 45 years, and his local knowledge of the ocean has been fine-tuned in the 32 years since he moved to St. John.
He knew his friend would find him, he said.
"I was never nervous or scared," he said. "I know my dive buddy. We're respectful of the ocean. We never have pushed it."
