Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Forbes story

[Garry Muir <garry.muir4@virgin.net>]

Hi Folks 

Here is the Forbes story.   

Regards Garry
  	Forbes Life 
Run Silent, Run Cheap 
David Armstrong, 03.31.03 


If you've got the metal, the mettle and $20,000, you can be your own Captain Nemo.
Patrick Regan still gets breathless recalling the first time he submerged in his own sub. It was only a two-minute dive in 30 feet of water, near the town of Benicia off San Francisco Bay. But after a lifetime of dreaming about it--and 30 months wrestling with acetylene torches, arc welding guns and 2,500 pounds of metal in his yard--it felt like his own personal moon shot. 

In March of 1991, with spectators lining the shore --and his wife, Lynn, standing by in scuba gear, in case things went wrong--the 53-year-old flight instructor scrunched down into a cockpit scarcely bigger than himself. He closed the hatch and started up a battery-powered motor. As the narrow, 18-foot-long craft moved out across the water, he turned a hand valve and heard water burbling into ballast tanks. Daylight faded to dark, as murky, greenish-brown water rose up over the two viewports. "It was terrifying," recalls Regan. Then he pitched the sub's nose back up, and suddenly--boom!--he surfaced, back into daylight. "It was like being reborn," he says. 

If you are lazy, you can buy your way into the underwater world. For $20 million, U.S. Submarines will custom-build you an underwater yacht, tricked out with staterooms, wood paneling, leather seats and a wet bar. (Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen is rumored to be interested.) 

When Regan got his urge to submerge he didn't have $20 million. He was 5 years old, the year was 1954, and he had just seen Walt Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Wet bar, hell! Regan wanted to be Captain Nemo. 

As an adult he spent three years researching submarine design, then bought a 14-foot hull salvaged from a boatyard. Reinforcing rings added to its inside give it strength to withstand depths up to 400 feet--four times as deep as a scuba diver typically can go. Regan has tempted fate to only 100 feet so far. He figures he's spent approximately $15,000. Most home builders spend a bit more. 

Having a tolerant spouse helps. So, too, does encouragement from other submariners. A Web site started by homebuilt-sub enthusiast and Sun Microsystems programmer Raymond Keefer lets builders swap pictures of their projects and engage in heady e-mail conversations on such topics as how to calculate "crush depth"--the depth at which your sub implodes like a beer can. (For links, go to forbes.com/subs.) 

Safety? The amateur builders' record is good. In the past 12 years there's been only one known fatality, which occurred when a 30-year-old engineer from Michigan cracked his viewport (apparently on a log) at the bottom of Green Lake. Retired Navy Captain George Kittredge, 84, has built craft so safe they've been certified by three marine engineering agencies, including the American Bureau of Shipping. His most recent one-man design, built last summer, is muscle-powered. Its skipper can pedal down to 250 feet, as if by bicycle. On the surface, the sub hoists a mast and proceeds by sail. 

Karl Stanley, 28, was in the third grade when he told his family he was going to build his own submarine. He spent years reading voraciously about subs and called professional designers for advice. When he turned 15 he got serious and, with savings from his after-school job in an ice cream shop, bought a 9-foot-long, 2-foot-diameter pipe for $500 from a metal supply store. He had it towed to his parents' Ridgewood, N.J. home, where he paid another $200 to a boat welder to put strengthening rings inside, picking up pointers on welding as he went. 

He worked on his sub off and on throughout high school, then hauled it with him on a boat trailer to Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., where he paid for its completion by buying and selling used textbooks. After eight years and $20,000 in parts and supplies, he finally submerged in 1997, the same week he graduated from college. 

Dubbed C-Bug (for "controlled buoyancy underwater glider"), Stanley's sub operates without a motor or propellers. Six ballast tanks, three on each side, project from the hull-like wings. By letting in water and then pushing it out with compressed air from tanks, Stanley can dive, swoop to a depth of 700 feet and soar back up, like a glider in an airstream. He's at work now on a new sub--a three-person job he says will descend to 3,000 feet. 

Submerged, Stanley has been chased by schools of amberjacks. Topside, he's been hounded by other nosy creatures. Boats from the Coast Guard and Florida Marine Patrol once converged on him, the authorities demanding to know exactly what this thing was and whether it might not be obstructing sea lanes. "They held me up for about two hours," he recalls. "They had guns, bulletproof vests, and they're flipping through this little book looking for a law." What rules, though, applied to a 16-foot boat without a motor? Legally it was the same as a canoe. "Finally they just let me dive," he says. "There was nothing they could do."