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 SUBMARINE!
Sometimes
knowing the right people at the right time can open the door to an
"experience of a lifetime" opportunity. This happened to me
this fall thanks to the courtesy of Jim Chapman of Chapman Marine and
the folks at Deep Marine Technology Inc. http://www.deepmarinetech.com/index.php
The Chapman Marine folks are the "go to" guys for large
salvage operations and underwater construction and repair on Lake Travis
and elsewhere. Most of the severely damaged boats that we have repaired
here at Eriksen Marine were recovered and brought to us by Chapman
Marine and their salvage crew.
Jim has
known for years that I have a "submarine fetish". Freud and
Fellini could have a field day with that one. My favorite movies are
Hunt for Red October, Das Boot, U-571, etc. etc. In my office I have a
framed laser/wood 3-D U-boat replica of the last surviving German U-boat
in Europe, there are also pictures of the sub in action and it's
captain. The captain is still alive and personally signed this piece. He
was given this  sup
to drive when he was given this sub to drive at age 21! Can you imagine
that? The actual sub it on display at a museum in Germany. http://uboat.net/gallery/index.html?gallery=U995B
I am not supporting the Nazi's here. These were just incredible
boats and to be handed a machine like that in your 20's and to be sent
across the Atlantic in it is just mind blowing to thing about today when
you consider they had no GPS, no Loran, not even much of a depth finder!
After meeting everyone and looking
the submarine over, I did my best to let them know that I did study the
book and had a pretty good idea how things are supposed to work. After a
basic orientation it was time to climb in. The body of the sub is
actually just a short tube and you have to hold yourself up with your
arms and lower yourself in like you are at the gym doing
"dips".
The machine is operated almost
completely with your feet. Two foot pedals
control,
forward, reverse, pitch, and sideways crabbing. A lever on the starboard
side blows and fills the ballast tanks. The cockpit was so tight I could
not really take any pictures from inside. Precise control of the
atmosphere is paramount. It is a small area and things can get out of
whack quickly. A slight negative pressure is maintained to help the
hatch seals hold and oxygen is slowly bled into the cabin from a tank.
Scrubbers clean the poisonous CO2 from the air. A CO2 and Oxygen monitor
constantly checks the quality of the air inside. It is a touchy
balancing act as I found out. The CO2 alarm was going off as I was
coming back in. After checking the systems, communicator etc. they
sealed me in.
When they started lowering the
platform I was not quite sure what to expect but surprisingly I was not
nervous at all. One thing became clear right away. "surfaced"
is a relative term on this sub. Even when all the way surfaced it is
mostly under water. Opening the hatch without having it up on the
platform on hanging from a crane would likely cause (premature
submersion) Nobody wants that. When I pulled out of the dock it was very
hard to see. Looking out of the dome, all you could see was green all
around and sunlight out the top. I figured out that if you bumped the
thrusters "up" once and a while as you are moving forward you
can actually kind of see where you are going.
WATCH
THE VIDEO
They let me
drive around for a while to get the feel for it, and then it was time to
submerge. They gave me the go ahead to blow the tanks and down I went!
Everything got quiet and dark. Lake Travis is supposedly the clearest
water reservoir in Texas but I was surprised to find out that you don't
have to go down very far before visibility goes to almost "0".
As you go deeper the green color just gets more and more black.
Everything moves so slowly that it is very easy to lose track of what
direction you are going, including up and down. The computer screen in
the sub was down so all I really had to navigate with was a compass and
a depthfinder. I could also cheat and look at which way the
communication cable was heading (towards home). I had fun driving around
down there but I have to admit I really had no idea where I was going
most of the time. There was no rate of climb or decent guage so a couple
of times I ended up sitting on the bottom or bobbing back up on the
surface. You could hold your depth with the thrusters while driving but
one you stopped you were either headed up or down if you didn't have
that one valve set exactly right. It has a very delayed reaction so this
is something that you would get the feel for over time.
I drove out
some more and went a little deeper. I was really not that deep but
everything turned black and all you could see what the glow from the
spotlights. It was like driving around blindfolded. I touched the bottom
and the sub came to a stop. I could see some type of cable or log or
something over the front of the sub. It was on top of the robotic arm
and the video camera. I tried to back up but the sub was firmly on the
bottom. I blew a little ballast and tired backing up again and it pulled
out from under the thing whatever it was. Then I started driving around
again but started noticing the the green was getting lighter and before
I knew it I was surfaced. Oh well, time to head back in. I turned
towards the comm. Cord and drove back to the dock. At first they told me
to just stop outside and they would pull me in, but over the comm. They
told me to go ahead and back it in to the dock and on to the platform so
I did. I did a pretty good job considering it was almost impossible to
see out the back of the bubble.
WATCH
VIDEO #2
WATCH VIDEO #3
What an
awesome experience. It is a small sub in shallow fresh water but it was
still the real deal and I got to drive it around on my own down there. I
really want to thank Jim Chapman and the folks at Deep Marine Technology
Inc. for trusting me with their very expensive machine. Some of the
younger guys that you see in the pictures were there training to be sub
pilots. What a fun job! If I was in my twenties, I would be all over
that. By the way they do have an employment app on their website. Hmmmm.....
http://www.deepmarinetech.com/subs_deepworker2000.html
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