‘Pitch-black’: Everett man recalls 2019 dive in an OceanGate sub

EVERETT — John Lundin went about 400-feet deep into the Sound in an OceanGate submersible in 2019.

The sub’s 90-minute dive in an area near Hat Island and Camano Island was dark and exhilarating.

“It’s a controlled descent, but it’s like a free-fall towards the bottom at a pretty rapid rate,” Lundin told The Daily Herald on Thursday. “Whether you’re going to the bottom of the Puget Sound or the Titanic, that is the same experience.”

Lundin, 50, owner of Bluewater Organic Distilling, was an invited guest of OceanGate, his business neighbor of eight years at the Port of Everett’s Waterfront Center. He was friends with CEO Stockton Rush, a regular who he let keep a monthly tab.

“He was kind of our own local Elon Musk character,” Lundin said. “He was kind, very charismatic and a natural leader. I admired his drive and his pioneering exploration, very boldly taking on this frontier.”

It had been several months since he saw Rush, who was preparing for the mission that ended this week in his death and that of four others.

“I am very sad, but I am super proud of Stockton for what he did, who he was. The vision that he has rallied so many people into,” Lundin said.

“I’ve watched them develop the Titan over the years,” he added. “They always had an open door to me and let me wander through the shop and see everything being developed and the incredible technology to create that vessel.”

It was reciprocal, with OceanGate employees coming to his bar for company events and happy hours. An inner hallway connected the businesses.

In 2019, Lundin joined four OceanGate workers for a test dive in the submersible Cyclops. The five-person vessel was a prototype to the Titan but with a large spherical front window made possible by the shallower operating depth capacity.

“I was a little scared to go down,” Lundin said. “They were good about explaining the safety protocols and how everything would work in the event of any problems.”

A 6-minute video clip he shot of the dive shows the platform descent and the journey along the way to stirring up silt when touching bottom. The pilot navigates the tubular vessel using a video game controller that has drawn much scrutiny.

“It was a great way of connecting the joystick toggle for the different thrusters,” Lundin said. “It made a lot of sense because you’re not exactly sitting at a helm.”

He tried it out. “I got to drive the sub around on the surface area, spin a couple circles,” he said.

One of his first impressions of the dive was how dark it got so fast, he said. “It gets pitch black.”

Outside beams illuminated the way.

“The visibility was incredible,” Lundin said. “I got to sit front and center and take in all the little microorganisms and everything swimming around. I’m a sailor and a mariner myself, and there was so much to learn. I had no idea how dense the water column was in terms of life. There’s just so much life at all the different depths.”

As amazing as it was, he had no desire to go on the Titanic dive.

“I think that would push the limit of my comfort level,” Lundin said. “That is very extreme. It’s more extreme than being in space. It’s an incredible achievement to put humans at that depth.”

Lundin said he never talked to Rush about dangers.

“I’d rather talk about life and philosophy and what makes him tick,” he said. “The risks are implied. You’re diving to the Titanic.”

Lundin’s distillery made a special batch of spirits for OceanGate in advance of the 2021 Titanic expedition.

“Years ago I sent a barrel to the Bering Sea for the ‘Deadliest Catch,’” he said. “Stockton and I started kicking around the idea of sending a barrel to the Titanic. It wouldn’t go down to the Titanic, but would be part of their whole operation up at the surface. But when COVID happened, they shifted their operation through Canada so logistically it didn’t work.”

The batch of spirits was consumed under another label, but he still has the end-caps of the Titanic barrel artwork.

“They are stenciled with the bow of the Titanic rising up and the Titan sub shining a light into the darkness,” he said. “I’ll have those framed.”

Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.