It was the wrong day for Stephen Bogaerts to have forgotten his wet suit, but forget it he had. What followed this realization was a manic drive back to the diving center, then a hurried leap into the water. The hour-long delay turned out to be fortuitous. His diving partner, Robbie Schmittner, was swimming downstream from a different starting point, carried by a current that Bogaerts would be fighting on his opposite path.
Normally the current rages, but on the day in question, January 23, 2007, it was unusually gentle. So Bogaerts reached the rendezvous point a half hour sooner than expected, and Schmittner 20 minutes later. As Schmittner turned the last corner, he saw Bogaerts’s light flickering in the distance. The ethereal glow marked the juncture of two giant caves—Sac Actun and Nohoch Nah Chich. With their discovery of the opening, the divers had proved that the two caves ...
