I´ve waited with publishing this story for more than one week now. That was to be sure that everything is really fine and no long-term effects (or better: defects) would render my satisfaction and happiness futile. It is not the case, all is fine and therefore I am sharing this crazy story now with you. It all started, as I said, some 7 or 8 days ago. It was a great sunny day as I was visiting a client of our company aboard his Oceanis 30.1. One of the tasks was to get to the masttop and take down the wind instrument for maintenance.
As usual, I´ve had my cell phone with me to take the compulsory masthead-picture. I don´t know what it is with those pictures, but somehow facebook & co need to have those pics occasionally. Sitting in my boatswain´s chair, swinging gently in the summer breeze, I longed to the phone in one of the pockets of the chair, as I suddenly realized that it wasn´t a pocket at all: It had no closed bottom. I mistook the strap for the hammer to be a pocket. Slowly, but surely, the phone slid down further and further. My brain realized that a catastrophe was about to happen, but my hands were to slow – and so the phone slid out and fell.
A cursed boat?
I saw it falling down all the way to the water. I was lucky that it did not hit the deck as it surely would have disintegrated. It plunged into the water and sank down. The berth at this place had a depth of 4 meters. What a mess! I took down the wind instrument and looked into the greenish water, not being able to see where it was. The owner of the yacht, full of sorrow for me, tried to cheer me up. He came up with the idea to “call a friend” – who apparently used to be an amateur diver. I had lost my confidence, yet of course wanted to rescue the phone: Practically all my life is saved on this SIM-card.
It took the diver more than two hours to arrive. A friendly guy who told me he was used to diving for phones. “Was it switched off or active when it fell?”, he asked. Well, it was active. His face was unmistakably telling me that my chances were miniscule. “You know where it is?”, he asked further. Well, I could specify the area where it hit the water pretty well, but how it slid down in the water, I couldn´t possibly know. My head was full of sequences of the TITANIC, breaking up under water and spreading her debris over a wide area. And so, after taking another half an hour to get dressed and geared up, he went down. 3 years now that I own it. Thousands of miles sailed. Thousands of pictures aboard taken. No incidents whatsoever. And now this, just 20 minutes from home … what a mess!
Diver to the rescue!
Loosing your phone is a mess. Always. Yes, there are ways to have your data saved in the cloud and being able to simply copy it onto a new phone. Yes, nobody is saving directly, locally on the phone anymore. Well. I do. And it´s even worse than this. I own a Huawei P30 pro – it was the last (and I would say their best) smartphone before the political stuff hit and – at least for us Westeners – the products of this company could no longer be equipped with Google apps. The P30 pro is not just a great phone, it is the best camera you can imagine!
All pictures taken for this website (if not for screenshots or external pictures) are taken through the excellent Leica-lenses and integrated Huwaei-camers of my phone. I even got rid of my big-ass reflex camera in favor of this wonder-machine. And now, knowing the phone laying on the seabed for more than 2 hours, in the midst of a muddy ocean floor, flooded by the aggressive salt water, I realized that the times of taking great pictures with that P30 pro would be over. What a mess! Well, not so fast …
Hats off to Huawei!
After just two minutes in the water and thanks to my precise location, the diver re-appeared to the surface and handed me my phone. I kneeled down on the side deck of the boat, stretched my arm and took it. My client and boat owner had filmed it, looking at the movie later, I heard myself proclaim with pure joy: “I don´t believe it!” Holding the phone in my hand, I saw the screen working, the camera was activated – it was switched on and running like there was nothing! Soaking wet, after more than 2 hours in the salt water and the screen was lit up as usual. I was puzzled. Happy. Enthusiastic!
I switched it off immediately and took it down into the yacht. There I held it under the fresh water tap and flushed it for a minute, taking off the salt. Drying it thoroughly and putting it into the sun, I tried to make sure that there wouldn´t be any water inside causing the phone to hot-wire. Waiting for another 20 minutes or so, I couldn´t wait but to activate it. The phone started as usual. All apps did run as usual. Internet? Worked perfectly well. I called my colleague, connection was up and fine, all speakers worked. Really, it was running smoothly as if nothing had happened. 2 hours saltwater!
Not just my data had been saved apparently and some 4.000 pictures – but also the phone itself. It apparently was not only “waterproof” as a marketing-claim, it is watertight for real! Hats off to Huawei, this is what I would call “Made with Quality”. As the diver came out of the water and joined the party, I paid him my curtesy-bill, he told me some stories about sunken phones. Most hot-wired. Some survived. Even one phone, as he told me, which was able to re-start even after 24 hours in the water: “But I can´t tell if it was an iPhone or one like yours.” Well, I have an idea …
The next masthead picture coming up
Happy as I was, I finished my work on the yacht. I suddenly remembered one occasion right aboard this yacht: It was some 2 years ago, a day before handover. I had brought the boat from the commissioning yard to this very berth over night. The next day, we fitted this very wind instrument (a B&G wireless windex) when, for some inattention, the battery to power the windex fell off of my hands right there standing at the transom. It sank down to the bottom of the berth. Well, the diver could have found it, maybe, but I am sure that this thing isn´t working anymore for sure.
So, is it cursed boat then? Sailors are very superstitious folks. When it comes to things falling out of my hands, maybe? As the repaired wind instrument had to be brought up to the masthead again, I refrained to take my freshly rescued phone up with me. Don´t stress the innocent hand, I thought to myself. And right I was. For today I´ve had enough excitement. And now, over one week after this incident, using my phone extensively for a full week now, I can be sure that it survived the dive without any late effects. What a great product, Huawei! And what a pity that the successor-phones cannot offer the same apps and software-standard. For now I have learned to check with much more scrutiny, if a pocket is really a pocket …
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