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Hi all, I just got back from a trip to the We trailered just over a thousand miles each way with a Land
Rover, and that part was smooth as can be. We pegged the cruise control at 80
mph and there were no incidents to report whatsoever. The trailer also worked
beautifully for launch and retrieval. Since this has been reported as a
frequent issue, I’ll share some of the details that made it go well. The
trailer has an extensible tongue. That is, there are 3 square tubes inside each
other, so that you can pull out 2 of the sections for a telescoping effect. Dale
Heinzig originally built the trailer that way, but I added an additional
pull-out section taking the total axle-to-hitch distance to 25 feet. This works
out just right, and so far on every ramp I’ve used the sub floats off
just before the Land Rover’s rear wheels touch the water. The trailer has
an aluminum diamond plate deck, and two UHMW (plastic) rectangular bars bolted
to that deck. The bars are 2” high, 3” wide, and 40” long.
They’re milled with inward-sloping top surfaces, so if the sub floats
down on them it gets pushed into alignment on the center of the trailer deck. All
you do to retrieve the boat is winch in the bow, and position it approximately
over the bars. Given the topography of gently sloping, shallow bottoms in The first dive was to be a simple checkout in shallow and
protected waters, but even to get to 6 feet of depth required a tow of 2 miles.
Being the first tow, I was not sure how well the glassed in tanks would work
out, so I went for the ride inside the sub. It got HOT. I didn’t have a
thermometer, but the folks on the boat said I looked like a wax figure when the
heating has been turned up way too high. The good news is that the glassed-in tanks
worked perfectly, and there was no need to inject air, therefore freeing the
pilot from having to sit through tows on the inside. We were towing with a 22
foot Angler that had a 250 HP outboard. However, it took nearly an hour and a
half to cover 2 miles, in flat calm conditions with no current. Even at that
slow speed, I had to keep the lid closed the whole time because the bow wave
came clean over it. Kittredge recommends opening the hatch every hour and a
half to refresh the cabin air. After that amount of time, my O2 content had
only dropped from 21% to 18%, and I didn’t feel any staleness in the air
whatsoever. However it’s also true I seem to use about half the air most
other people do, on SCUBA at any rate. An extraordinary thing that happened on that tow was that
the inside of the sub rusted before my eyes, within the first half hour. Prior
to the trip I’d sandblasted and painted. The outside got epoxy paint, but
the inside just got a primer and water based paint. The water based thing is
because the sale of oil based paints has been restricted where I live, but I’m
afraid this substitute just doesn’t cut it… I’ll be
mail-ordering some good stuff and doing the inside job all over again. On the
outside, the paint held up well in general, but with lots of local rust spots. I’m
hoping now these have shown up it’s a matter of spot-fixing and it should
stay a bit more resistant once they are dealt with. Also anywhere the sub
touches anything, no matter how lightly, it will rust. It would be good to redo
the prop guards in stainless, because they’re the first thing to have
contact with any pier or boat. Something that I should have thought of was a ballast issue.
On local With the pilot out of the boat, Snoopy could be towed faster.
However, the tow boat had serious control issues, like pointing the bow left
but going right instead. Things that helped were jamming the rudder pedals and
lashing the thrusters. If a thruster goes vertical, you get more drag on that
side. We also found it helped to attach the tow rope to the mechanical claw
rather than the eye on the bow. The sub has a tendency to go under at speed, so
attaching to a low point helps to counteract that. Above all, the thing to do
was to use an extremely short tow rope. The best result was with a triangle
from both sides of the boat transom to the sub, with the sub being not more
than 2 feet behind the outboard. With these changes, we gradually worked our
way up to a maximum tow speed of 3.5 mph. There was one issue that could be really serious, but that
we were spared on account of good weather. Many power boats have extremely low
transoms, because there’s an assumption they will be moving forward at
high speed. If we had been towing at one or two knots, and large waves had been
coming in from astern, the Angler could have been in very serious trouble. And
it’s probably a more seaworthy hull than many. Another major issue is that if you leave the pilot out of
the boat for the tow, he still has to get inside on the open ocean. When a
K-250 is surfaced, but has a pilot and sufficient weight to make it under, the
freeboard is VERY small. Basically any chop comes perilously close to swamping
the boat, and there were many occasions when I slammed the lid shut because of
an approaching wave. For example, you need to be very much on the lookout for
waves from other boats, which often make close passes out of curiosity.
Although we were never actually swamped, at the end of each outing there was an
inch or so of water in the boat just from splashing, condensation, etc. Also, I
had to swim across to the sub on numerous occasions and get in soaking wet. One
thing I was very happy about is that prior to the trip, I redid all the
electricals using waterproof enclosures and waterproof switches. I rerouted
cables that used to run under the floor, where I have no doubt the salt water
would have shorted them out. Snoopy has rugged but extremely elementary
electricals, and I could not have done any of this with sophisticated
electronics on board. All I had in the way of electronics was a medical O2
meter and Divelink communications gear. The O2 meter lasted less than a day and
has not worked since. The Divelink was OK because it is designed to be around
water, so the circuits are potted in epoxy. No doubt the safe way to operate would
be to put the pilot inside upon launch, and keep the hatch closed for the
duration, so that condensation would be the only thing to deal with. Unfortunately,
in a On one occasion the tow boat dropped me off 50 yards from
the ramp, and I got in the sub to motor in under my own power. To my surprise, one
of the props had fallen off. Several times I had to clear floating clumps of
seaweed from the props. My theory is that one of these clumps prevented the prop
from turning when I hit reverse. That would have unscrewed the nut. In future,
those nuts are going to be installed in pairs! I am not too sure about my
theory, however, since I didn’t actually see the moment the prop came
off. It could also just have happened from alternating forward and reverse many
times. So to summarize, towing was the bane of our existence. We
found ourselves stuck at sea fighting currents until nearly Cheers, Alec |