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Hi everyone.
Just got my dive scooter in the mail today. It is a Sea Doo VS
supercharged. It has two speeds and will pull a diver thru the water on low
speed at 2 miles per hour and
on turbo speed at 3 miles per hour. It has an adjustable buoyancy chamber
that you can leave empty if you want the unit to float for snorkeling or add
weight to it for diving.
It has lots of other neat features that I won't bore you with right now. I
just read the manual and ran it and am going to totally discharge the factory
precharged battery so that
I know it is totally drained and then will recharge it.
I plan to attach the Sea Doo VS supercharged to the rear of my 12 ft two
person fiberglass wet sub. By using a stainless control cable line that was used
to turn a outboard motor, I plan to be able to
remotely access the two triggers on the Sea Doo from my dashboard. It will
probably be a bit slower than I would like because it is designed to pull a
person, not a wetsub with two people thru the water.
But if it works well enough to push the sub as fast as a diver can normally
swim I will be happy. If this experiment works I plan to buy another one and
have dual propulsion to increase
my speed. I forget who suggested this some time ago to me on this forum,
but someone did and it makes good sense. By using the Sea Doo VS supercharged
scooter it is already rated
for 30 meters (100 ft.), does not need to be pressure compensated, and has
a nice streamline shape and requires no battery pod or battery pod equalization.
Run time is an hour and a half. I was susposed to use the
scooter
tomorrow on our search for a sunken sub off Egmont key that I mentioned
earlier, but the weather is not cooperating. Heavy winds and high seas
predicted. So we are rescheduling for hopefully
tuesday when the weather is susposed to be better. This german sub we are
looking for is not susposed to be there. All the experts say it can't be there.
I just don't know, but I am going to go look. Can't hurt!
The fellow I am going with swears he dove on it in 1970. He was one of
Mel's divers on the Atochia. If it is there it might be covered by silt by now.
We will see. The way I look at it, there is no such thing as a bad dive
as long as everyone is ok when it is over. If we find something, fine. If
not? That's ok too. For me it's not finding the treasure that's the adventure.
It's the adventure that's the treasure!
If the scooter works well and I get another one and that solves all my
propulsion and speed problems, I will have a brand new, 74 lbs thrust minnkota
trolling motor with an 11 inch weedless wedge
prop available to sale. I also have two about 5 ft long 12 inch (yes 12
inch!) diameter 1/4 inch thick pvc pipes. I also have the permanent end cap and
the threaded female fitting for the other end along
with the male plug for that female fitting. Nothing is glued or drilled
yet. Everything you need plus an extra pipe for a battery pod and strong
motor. I want to make sure my scooter ideas work for the sub first before I sell
off my other
parts though. If the scooters work out then I will let you all know in
case anyone here might want to purchase a motor and pod parts for
their sub project. If my first single scooter doesn't work like I
want for the sub,
and I have to scratch the scooter/sub idea and go back to my minnkota with
battery pod, that is ok. I wanted a scooter for diving anyway. Plus if they work
on the sub, I plan to make them easily detachable from the
sub so I can use them for diving without the sub. Which brings me back to
what someone mentioned here a while back when they told me to just strap several
scooters onto the sub and be able to detach them and have them
serve dual duty as both sub propulsion and as dive scooters. Who was it
that mentioned that to me? If you are reading this remind me will you? I need to
know who to thank for the idea.
Kindest Regards,
Bill Akins.
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