RES: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Run Silent, Run Cheap-Shot

["Jorge Lourenço Jr." <jorloujr@ig.com.br>]

The article can be found here:
http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/0331/062.html

or here:

================================================================
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 10 meters 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 1,100 kilograms 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, 5-meter-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
4-meter hull salvaged from a boatyard. Reinforcing rings added to its inside
give it strength to withstand depths up to 120 meters--four times as deep as
a scuba diver typically can go. Regan has tempted fate to only 30 meters so
far. He figures he's spent approximately $15,000. Most amateur builders
spend a bit more.

Having a tolerant spouse helps. So, too, does encouragement from other
submariners. A website started by homebuilt-sub enthusiast and Sun
Microsystems programmer Raymond Keefer lets builders swap pictures of their
projects and engage in heady email 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 75 meters, 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 3-meter-long, 60-centimeter-diameter pipe for $500 from a metal
supply store. He had it towed to his parents' Ridgewood, New Jersey, 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, Florida, 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
210 meters 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 900 meters.

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 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 5-meter 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."

================================================================

	"I found it inaccurate, misleading, and objectionable ..."

	Me too !

	Jorge

-----Mensagem original-----
De: owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org
[mailto:owner-personal_submersibles@psubs.org]Em nome de Captain Nemo
Enviada em: sexta-feira, 28 de março de 2003 08:32
Para: Personal_Submersibles@psubs.org
Assunto: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Run Silent, Run Cheap-Shot


David Armstrong just sent me two complimentary issues of FORBES MAGAZINE
containing the article on homebuilt submarines.  I found it inaccurate,
misleading, and objectionable on so many levels I can't list them all here.

I agreed to participate in this project (1) because Armstrong assured me
he'd represent homebuilt submarine enthusiasts in a positive light, and (2)
because I thought FORBES was a reputable publication. After reading RUN
SILENT, RUN  CHEAP I now see FORBES as akin to the NATIONAL INQUIRER.

Never again will I let my story be told by non-subbers who don't know what
they're talking about.

Pat Regan
VULCANIA SUBMARINE
Hawaii
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