‘An epic kind of proposal’: B.C. man pops the question from Galapagos seafloor

Most deep-sea divers will spend a lifetime underwater without finding treasure at the bottom of the sea.

Not so for B.C. couple Cailin Lindsay and Maxwel Hohn, whose recent diving expedition included a treasure chest, a gold ring — and the promise of a lifetime of love.

It was the culmination of an elaborate marriage proposal Hohn, an Emmy award-winning underwater cinematographer, told Global News he spent the better part of a year and a half planning.

“I knew it had to be somewhere that was very grand, it had to be like an epic kind of proposal, but I also had to catch her off guard by surprise, so I decided to do it in Galapagos,” he explained.

“I’d told her that I’d never proposed to her underwater, so she didn’t really have this in the back of her head thinking that this would be the trip that would happen.”

The road to Galapagos was a long and winding one.

Lindsay and Hohn both grew up on the Sunshine Coast, and while both of them are lifelong divers, they never actually met until about eight years ago.

Hohn already knew Lindsay’s father through the diving industry, and during a chance encounter her brother dropped her name while “playing cupid a little bit.”

“Maxwell kind of went, ‘Wait a minute, your dad never mentioned anything about having a daughter,’ so he reached out,” she said.

The pair connected in Mexico, where, true to form, their first date was under the sea — a dive with schools of jackfish and bull sharks.

“We’re both very adventurous people, and you know it’s kind of been one big adventure from the get-go between the two of us, we had our first adventure dive date, and it’s kind of never slowed down from there,” Lindsay said.

“When I saw her on the first dive and her skill set underwater, I was like, yep, she’s the one,” Hohn added.

It was only several years later, after the pair started working together on Hohn’s wildlife cinematography business, that he decided it was time to take the plunge.

It was a major operation, involving the help of multiple friends and an Ecuadorian company called Galaxy Expeditions to plan out the elaborate scene.

“The hardest thing was trying to keep it a secret, because I have all these people I’m collaborating with to try and plan this event, and they’re texting me, so I’m having to keep my phone very secretive from her,” he said. “And as most people know, doing that in front of your spouse is quite tricky.”

At one point, the ring even fell out of Hohn’s bag as they were unpacking it onto the boat — but Lindsay never got wise.

As the clock ticked down to the big moment, Hohn said he got so nervous about whether it would work that he almost got cold flippers and called the whole thing off.

“But I had all these people committed to kind of helping me, you know that we had this treasure chest already hidden, so the ring was already underwater. I had four people who had these big laminated signs to say, ‘Will you marry me?’ They were hiding in this place behind a rock,” he chuckled.

More nerve-wracking, when they got to the seafloor, Hohn said he began to question whether he could remember exactly where they’d stashed the ring.

His friends had told him it was placed right next to a big turtle.

“Of course, you know, with wildlife, nature, and things like that, turtles don’t stay in one spot, they move around, but sure enough, when we got there, this giant turtle was pretty much sitting next to the chest and guarding it, which was pretty special,” he said.

“Cailin noticed the turtle right away, and she went to go see it and check it out, and it kind of revealed the chest was behind it.”

Lindsay said she was initially hesitant to open the chest, explaining she thought “it’s not ours to open,” but Hohn insisted.

“But Maxwell insisted I open it, so I finally opened the lid and sure enough, there’s photos of us, there was a message in a bottle, and the ring,” she said.

“I was absolutely in shock from that point onwards … my mask started filling up with tears and I had to keep clearing it throughout the dive.”

The pair have yet to come up for air enough to start planning their wedding.

But they say it’s a safe bet it will happen above sea level.

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