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<DIV>Thanks for the write up and very interesting to hear the things you have
encountered! One thing that caught my attention was the fact that it was
difficult if not impossible to enter the sub with the 3’ chop!. I am building a
K-350 on the big Island and we have no lakes to dive in only the ocean so I may
have to address that somehow.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>best wishes</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Rick Patton</DIV>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=paulkreemer@gmail.com
href="mailto:paulkreemer@gmail.com">Paul Kreemer</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, October 06, 2013 9:35 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=personal_submersibles@psubs.org
href="mailto:personal_submersibles@psubs.org">Personal Submersibles General
Discussion</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive report - Pickles
Reef</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
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<P dir=ltr>Thanks Alec, that's a great writeup of your adventure! </P>
<P dir=ltr>Paul </P>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Oct 5, 2013 11:05 PM, "Hugh Fulton" <<A
href="mailto:hc.fulton@gmail.com">hc.fulton@gmail.com</A>> wrote:<BR
type="attribution">
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<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d">Great
tale. You should take up writing. Most enjoyable and I could
picture the whole thing.<U></U><U></U></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d">Best
wishes Hugh<U></U><U></U></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d"><U></U><U></U></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: #1f497d"><U></U><U></U></SPAN> </P>
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<P class=MsoNormal><B><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'">From:</SPAN></B><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Tahoma','sans-serif'">
Personal_Submersibles [mailto:<A
href="mailto:personal_submersibles-bounces@psubs.org"
target=_blank>personal_submersibles-bounces@psubs.org</A>] <B>On Behalf Of
</B>Alec Smyth<BR><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, 6 October 2013 6:18 p.m.<BR><B>To:</B>
Personal Submersibles General Discussion<BR><B>Subject:</B> [PSUBS-MAILIST]
Dive report - Pickles Reef<U></U><U></U></SPAN></P></DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><U></U><U></U> </P>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal>In Islamorada for the 2013 PSUBS convention, we tried a few
days ago to dive the reefs off the Atlantic side of the island. After towing
Snoopy out to the dive site, I had to call off the dive because a three foot
chop made it unsafe to board. I made it aboard myself, but water was splashing
over the hatch land, and with the weight of a second person it would have been
touch and go. When their hatches are open, these little boats are like holes
in the water just waiting to be filled up by the next wave. Three foot waves
are not large, and they are entirely normal a few miles from shore, but they
are just beyond practical conditions for Snoopy.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>For our second attempt on the reefs we changed tactics,
deciding to board at the boat ramp and make the tow under a closed hatch. This
would guarantee a dive regardless of wave conditions, but also introduce a new
challenge. With a temperature of 89 degrees above the surface and 86 degrees
below it, the problem was now how to avoid getting cooked during the tow.
There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and Snoopy’s big acrylic dome hatch
transforms her cabin into a greenhouse. The pilot, with his head in the middle
of the dome, feels that he is under a giant magnifying glass. Hot air
rises.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Steve McQueen and I boarded at Harry Harris state park at
12:30, after having spent the morning at the local school giving four hundred
local children a tour of the sub. Snoopy’s payload can be maximized by adding
buoyancy spheres. We installed every available one, and used their buoyancy to
load twenty pounds of ice inside the cabin. Our support diver, Scott Waters,
attached a white hotel towel over the dome with bungee cord, and then tied off
the tow line. We set out, towed by Doug Suhr in his whaler, an ideal surface
support vessel. He had fashioned a custom wooden frame that allowed towing
from a point just aft of midships. That is where tugs and trawlers attach
their tow lines, and it allowed the whaler to retain good control, whereas in
the past I had found Snoopy often turned around the towboat when towed from
the transom.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>The tow was unexpectedly interesting, because of the bottom
rushing by and constantly changing scenery. Most of the time it would be sand
and sea grass, but there were always changes and it would at times become more
rocky, or turn to pure sand, and drop away or rise up to just a couple of feet
from us. We rushed past or right through clouds of jellies. As Steve put it,
it felt like an arcade game.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>I have no idea how hot it was inside the sub, but it was
surely an outrageous number. Prior to departure we had applied detergent to
the viewports to prevent them from fogging. That succeeded on the forward
viewport, but with that single exception every other surface in the boat
streamed water profusely. Every ten minutes or so I would pick up a rapidly
dwindling bag of ice and give it a hug, rest it on the back of my neck, or
wear it as a hat. I went through five bottles of drinking
water.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Between the rolling of the boat, and the heat and humidity,
I found myself getting a bit woozy. It was not sea sickness so much as a
feeling of light-headedness, so we tried increasing the oxygen concentration
in the cabin to counteract it. Between us we had been consuming ¾ liters of
oxygen per minute, with the analyzer readings hovering around 19 percent and a
fraction. We bumped up the flow to 4 liters per minute until the oxygen
concentration reached 23 percent, a limit above which the cabin atmosphere
would have become a fire hazard. That is only two percent above normal, but it
made us both feel perceptibly better.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>We arrived at the dive site two hours after closing the
hatch, and rather incredibly only four minutes after our target time of low
tide. The twenty pounds of ice had all melted. Our normal tow speed is three
knots, and the distance was only four miles, but some “hatch closed” time was
spent getting underway, some was spent on a stop to re-position the towel when
it was displaced by waves washing over the dome, and some was spent on the
final locating of the site. <U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Doug anchored the whaler and Scott swam over to remove our
towel sunshade, and to attach a video camera to the sub. In the previous few
days the heat and humidity had already led to the failure of a depth sounder
and a compass, so I had decided not to risk the good camera inside the sub. In
tropical climates at least, the cabin is a very dangerous place for
electronics.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>We initiated our dive and tested communications as soon as
the transducer went under water. The gear worked, yet the communications were
very faint. Snoopy’s transducers are mounted above the hull and immediately
behind the conning tower. Being just beneath the surface and pointed in the
direction of the whaler, the transducer’s line of sight to the boat was
blocked by the conning tower. Once at depth the communications were loud and
clear.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>The reef was unfortunately not healthy, as all reefs in
this part of the world, yet it was absolutely fantastic compared to the lakes
Snoopy normally dives in. There were large sponges, fish, and interesting
terrain. In particular, we found “streets” of sand running between raised
mounds of coral on either side, reminiscent of scenes in the movie 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea. Visibility was about fifty feet.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>In Snoopy, almost all the viewing underwater is done
through the bow viewport. Through the dome it is very hard to see the bottom
unless diving alongside a wall or quite high terrain, and even in that
scenario optical distortion causes features to appear very small and far off.
Nonetheless, while I could hardly see the bottom through the dome, I did see a
column of bubbles rising in the distance and steered Snoopy in their
direction. It was Scott, who had found a lost anchor. He tied it to Snoopy’s
pickup arm, and we blew some air into the ballast tanks and delivered it to
the boat.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>We continued wandering the bottom, sometimes letting the
current waft us along sideways and other times using the stern thruster to
follow the “sand roads”. These gradually led into deeper water, and we
followed them hoping for the continental shelf drop-off that is only a short
distance from Pickles reef. We started at thirty feet, and followed these
paths down to a little over fifty feet, but unfortunately did not make it as
far as the drop-off.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Snoopy was ballasted ever so slightly buoyant, perhaps just
a pound or two. One side thruster was locked in a straight down position, the
other slightly inclined to counter the rotation induced by the props. Indeed
the props only needed to turn very slowly to maintain depth, as if turned by
hand instead of by a motor. To slowly rise I would shut them off, or I would
speed them up to descend. The side thruster throttle acted as a “depth knob”,
allowing depth to be controlled with an accuracy of a couple of
inches.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Laying prone and looking out of the forward viewport, Steve
had a good view of upcoming terrain. He acted as observer, calling out details
about what lay ahead and asking for port or starboard headings and altitude
adjustments. One tries to stay close to the bottom in order to see it better,
but not touch anything in order to avoid damaging the reef. He took a turn at
the controls as well, which in Snoopy does not mean that we changed places,
but rather that we passed the remote controller between us. <U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>At one point we lost communications with the surface. We
were to learn later that the whaler had re-positioned to follow us, and in
doing so ran over its transducer cable, severing it and losing the transducer.
The whaler could have tracked us by our acoustic pinger, but instead simply
followed the bubbles of our support divers, who were following us by sight in
the clear water.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>After an hour and a half of contented wandering, we
suddenly sensed that the stern thruster had lost power. A moment later we both
noticed a smell of burning. I turned off power to the stern thruster speed
control, looked up to ensure we were not under the whaler, and immediately
initiated a ballast blow, which gives a much faster rate of ascent than the
thrusters. We could have continued maneuvering on side thrusters only, but it
seemed prudent to call the dive. Afterwards I would discover that a little
piece of fan coral had been sucked in by the stern thruster, and wedged
between the propeller and its shroud. It was very tough material, and it
locked up the thruster causing its speed controller to burn out. Although the
speed controllers are supposed to have over-current protection, I will be
adding breakers in the near future.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>One more surprise awaited us during the tow back to shore.
After about an hour of towing, we had reached a spot at which the waves were
lower, and we were on the radio to the whaler planning to pause the tow and
transfer to her. But just then there was suddenly a very loud pop in the
cabin, and my immediate thought was of a ruptured high pressure line. It was
followed a second later by another equally loud pop. I was puzzled by the fact
my ears were not registering any increase in cabin pressure, when I saw
Steve’s life preserver inflating. These life preservers are of the type that
resembles suspenders, inflated by a CO2 cartridge which Steve’s movement had
accidentally triggered. For a moment it looked like his PFD might strangle him
in the tight space, but he managed to wriggle out of it. I’ll be looking at
some way to secure the rip cord on these PFDs, to make accidental deployment a
little less likely. There is precious little space in Snoopy under normal
conditions, but with an inflated PFD the lack of space becomes almost
comical.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Finally we came aboard the whaler. Being in the tower, I
stowed my seat, climbed out, and closed the hatch quickly behind me. This
allowed Steve to reposition himself into the tower without fear of being
swamped while doing so. The hatch opened again, Steve jumped out, and we were
both on deck. It had been five hours since we closed the
hatch.<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>It was only once back on the whaler I saw Steve was quite
hungry. It was six in the evening, and he had avoided eating anything all day,
anticipating that it would be a long dive and knowing that Snoopy has no head.
Now that is dedication!<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><U></U><U></U> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><U></U><U></U> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Cheers,<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><BR>Alec<U></U><U></U></P></DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><U></U><U></U> </P>
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