[PSUBS-MAILIST] Islamorada Trip Report...

Mon Aug 7 20:07:00 EDT 2017

Cliff,Sounds like a great time!  you are lucky that R-300 is so small.  You can build a pontoon style launch cradle that can ballast up or down.  You can transport the sub in the cradle on one trailer.  You can tow the sub to your dive site, then get in in comfort and safety.  Hank

On Monday, August 7, 2017, 5:51:35 PM MDT, Alan via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

Thanks Cliff.I am wanting to glean as much as I can from this for my build!When you've recovered; do you think some sort of snorkel system with fresh air flowing in would have helped? Did you cover the dome while towing? What sort of towing speed were you getting when you weren't submerged? How was manoeuvrability this time round? Cheers Alan 
Sent from my iPad
On 8/08/2017, at 11:26 AM, Cliff Redus via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

Big thanks Doug for posting dive report and for you and your mom and dad for hosting us last week. You guys  did a magnificent job. This was the best sub trip of my life!  
I spend the day organizing the video and pictures from the trip and mailed them to Alec who has graciously agree to edit into a video of the 2017 Psub Regatta. 
I still need to review the data I logged from the trips but the key points were the first ocean side dive was to the coral heads which is 3.9 miles from Doug's house so 7.8 miles total tow with average cabin temp of 93F and RH of 80%.  Average speed was about 4.5 MPH.  As long as we ran partially submerged to was hot but fine.  This was a test dive to see if we could get out deeper.  Water was not clear at this location. The deeper dive on Aug 3rd was out to the edge of the deep water.  The 7.8 miles from Doug's house (bay side) to the dive site was smooth and we ran submerged so even thought the cabin temp and RH were high, it was not bad at all as it was a smooth tow and there were thinks to see on way out. At the second dive site the water was 100 ft deep and very clear with 4-6 ft swells.  Could see the sub on the bottom from the Boston Whaler.  The tow back was rough.  With 4-6 ft following seas, it was like being on a roller coaster both in the boat and in the sub. Second dive had a total of 15.6 miles of towing at 4.5 MPH, 94F and 84% RH and hatch closed time of around 5 hours.  I did not loose my cookies but it was close.
As Doug noted, the consensus of all was that we need a tender vessel with launch capability to get the subs out to the dive sites without towing.  Towing subs sucks.  All survived but I used up all my on board water and upon making it back to the beach, consumed several gallon of water.  We were all pretty whipped.  All  in all, it was quite an adventure.
More latter.
Cliff

On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 4:53 PM, Douglas Suhr via Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

Greetings PSUBS group, Douglas Suhr here to share my take on the 4-day
sub operation we just completed in Islamorada, FL (July 31st, August
1-3).

Wow, what a whirlwind! So July 31st was really an arrival / setup day
with August 1-3 being true operational days. Though it was unfortunate
that Alec wasn't able to make it with Shackleton, we had our hands
full with Cliff's R-300. Without Shackleton, we also had enough time
to get Snoopy set up and lowered into the canal for some basic diving.

List of Crew: Dan Lance, Steve McQueen, Cliff Redus, Rick Maxwell,
River Dolfi, Mike Patterson, Doug, Sarah, Douglas Suhr.

This was my first time meeting Dan Lance, a (retired) saturation diver
and commercial welder. What a pleasure to have him join us on this
operation. Dan is modest, but most willing to share his knowledge and
extensive experience with a newbie like me. So pleased to have chatted
with him in the Keys. During the towing of the R-300, Dan manned the
tow line and helped with comms.

Steve McQueen and River Dolfi did awesome jobs as our frog men.
Filming, attaching / detaching davit and tow lines, etc. they were
both in and out of the water quite a bit (especially Steve). I think
River took a little jelly sting for the team. What troopers!

Cliff and his assistant Rick are such a joy be around. Rick is one of
the friendliest people you'll ever meet (and even brought a gift for
the group: a watermelon, straight from Texas!). Cliff is always
willing to share his expertise (and sub, too) with anyone who'd like
to learn more. I know that between Dan Lance and Cliff, I learned more
than I can remember last week.

Mike Patterson, mom, dad and myself were all just providing whatever
kind of "troop support" we could to Cliff and the R-300.

River, Steve and Myself got in some dive time on Snoopy in the canal
(which was great), but I think the biggest accomplishment was getting
the R-300 out a ways into the ocean.

Our Boston Whaler (a 25' boat with a single 250hp Yamaha) was able to
tow the R-300 out about 5 miles into the ocean (at about 4mph). We
were in radio communication with Cliff most of the time, though we did
suffer a few intermittent losses in comms. When we got to a spot about
100 feet deep, we started to slow down a bit and at that point the tow
line hook (an admittedly cheap thing) let loose(!) so we decided that
we had reached our dive location. We switched from marine radio to OTS
and Cliff started down. Visibility was supurb! As Cliff neared the
bottom at 100 − 110 feet, he was still quite visible from the Whaler!
His 18 foot long R-300 looked to be about 3 inches long, but wow did
it ever stand out from the rest of the sandy bottom. Cliff spent about
an hour "flying" his sub, surfacing, diving and maneuvering about,
testing systems and observing the ocean around him. By the time Cliff
surfaced and we towed back to port Antigua, elapsed time stood at 4.5
/ 5 hours (estimate). Cliff said that he stayed cool by the water
flowing over the sub's dome hatch while in tow. Upon returning I think
we were all ready to take a break, but everyone felt great
accomplishment with the mission.

A couple of lessons I took away from the tow out: We need better tow
equipment (better line, hardware and maybe a quick release). Our boat
REALLY needs a GPS (still don't have one). Towing into waves isn't so
much a problem, but when towing with the waves, our tow line needs to
be measured so as to sustain the proper distance between tow vessel
and sub (otherwise the sub and boat are constantly slacking and then
jerking, stressing the tow line and making it difficult for boat and
sub to track straight).

The devotion of our crew was amazing, even in the heat and the waves
everyone did their jobs. Managing even a small sub operation like this
is more work / effort than meets the eye, that's for sure. At dinner,
one of the main discussions revolved around a support vessel that can
carry a sub or two on board, eliminating the slow, time consuming tow
out to an ocean dive site. Dan Lance shared details on his support
vessel project, which is no doubt going to be a dream in terms of
logistics. Hopefully when said vessel is ready to sail, Dan will lend
its services to host a diving event! ~ Douglas S.

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