<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Sorry that last email got sent off prematurely.</div><div>This Ipad is too small, or my fingers are too big.</div><div>Yes was married once. Don't think I'd have had a show of getting to the</div><div>Psub conference if I were still married.</div><div>Lovely water here & deep drop offs. I'm sure you will be posting some</div><div>awesome videos when the sub is finished.</div><div>Alan<br><br>Sent from my iPad</div><div><br>On 11/10/2013, at 9:14 AM, Alan <<a href="mailto:alanlindsayjames@yahoo.com">alanlindsayjames@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div>Hi Rick,</div><div>Thanks I pre-paid 6 days in the Hotel, so I'm stuck here. This Island is big enough.</div><div><br></div><div><br><br>Sent from my iPad</div><div><br>On 11/10/2013, at 7:32 AM, "Land N Sea" <<a href="mailto:landnsea1@hawaiiantel.net">landnsea1@hawaiiantel.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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<div>Hey Alan,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I am on the Big Island (southern most) and do get over there from time to
time to look at jobs but won’t be over there in the near future. Inter Island
air fair has gone off the charts cuz they have you by the you know what. If you
would feel like swinging by to see this Island on your way back, would love to
meet you and show you my project. </div>
<div>That offer extends to anyone in the group. We have a spare guest room and
could probably talk the wife into anyone staying a few days but longer than that
you might have to get a room somewhere as she is a little weird about that,
unlike myself. Got to keep the wife happy..... </div>
<div>Have a nice time in Waikiki.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Aloha</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Rick</div>
<div> </div>
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<div style="font-color: black"><b>From:</b> <a title="alanlindsayjames@yahoo.com" href="mailto:alanlindsayjames@yahoo.com">Alan</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Thursday, October 10, 2013 3:34 PM</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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<div>Rick, </div>
<div>I'm emailing from Starbucks on Waikiki beach.</div>
<div>You did say to come over for a conference.</div>
<div>Florida is pretty close in temperature.</div>
<div>I'm here for 6 days if you happen to be coming to this Island.</div>
<div>Alan<br><br>Sent from my iPad</div>
<div><br>On 10/10/2013, at 7:45 AM, "Land N Sea" <<a href="mailto:landnsea1@hawaiiantel.net">landnsea1@hawaiiantel.net</a>>
wrote:<br><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite">
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<div>I have been out of the loop for 5 weeks on the mainland on my sailboat
and I should of read all the emails before responding when I got back. I did
view the great footage and noticed that my tower looked a little taller (good
for water ingress) and of course doesn’t have the dome so I hopefully won’t
have quite as bad of a heat problem as one with the dome but I was thinking
about Emile’s clear acrylic fairing as an option when I heard about the water
egress problems with a three foot chop.</div>
<div>It does get pretty hot here and we are about the same latitude as Florida
so I will probably be trying Phil’s idea of the frozen pouches vest and or the
gallon of frozen water and have the air coming out of my scrubber blowing
against it. </div>
<div>We have a heck of a fetch here in the middle of the pacific for the
wind/waves to build and a three foot wave is considered the norm but I think
the good news is that the tops of the waves may be further apart here giving a
better window to get in and out quickly. </div>
<div>Thanks </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Rick</div>
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<div style="font-color: black"><b>From:</b> <a title="alecsmyth@gmail.com" href="mailto:alecsmyth@gmail.com">Alec Smyth</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, October 09, 2013 4:13 PM</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>
<div style="FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none; DISPLAY: inline">
<div dir="ltr">Hi Rick,
<div> </div>
<div>Well at least a 350 will be more resistant to it than a 250, since you
have a taller coning tower. You may want to consider an Emile-style clear
acrylic fairing around the coning tower to go even higher. Not sure if
you are just catching up with email, but there's also this video: <a href="https://vimeo.com/76340636">https://vimeo.com/76340636</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div><br>Alec</div></div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Land N Sea <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:landnsea1@hawaiiantel.net" target="_blank">landnsea1@hawaiiantel.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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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><b>From:</b> <a title="paulkreemer@gmail.com" href="mailto:paulkreemer@gmail.com" target="_blank">Paul Kreemer</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Sunday, October 06, 2013 9:35 AM</div>
<div class="im">
<div><b>To:</b> <a title="personal_submersibles@psubs.org" href="mailto:personal_submersibles@psubs.org" target="_blank">Personal
Submersibles General Discussion</a> </div></div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Dive report - Pickles
Reef</div></div></div>
<div> </div></div>
<div style="FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-STYLE: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none; DISPLAY: inline">
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<div class="h5">
<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" target="_blank">hc.fulton@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br type="attribution">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple">
<div>
<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>
<div style="BORDER-TOP: #b5c4df 1pt solid; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0cm; PADDING-TOP: 3pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0cm; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-RIGHT: 0cm">
<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>
<p>__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
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