Hi
all,
I just got back from a trip to the
Florida
Keys with Snoopy (K-250) and thought
I?d share how it went, since it was certainly
instructive.
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 Florida, I knew I
was in for long tows, so one of the prep items was glassing in the bottom of
the ballast tanks. For those of you who might have missed it, there was a
thread here on how the K boat tanks burp during tows, requiring the pilot to
periodically inject air. My glassed-in tanks now have openings on the center
line, so as to minimize that burping effect.
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
Chesapeake dives
(brackish water), I?d found myself 60 lbs light. So I built some nice keel
covers out of quarter inch plate, which added 60 lbs in addition to improving
the aesthetics. Well, in fully salt water I was short an additional 80 lbs! We
ended up dismantling a nephew?s exercise machine and carrying the weights in
the sub, but in the future I?m going to have to build in some removable
weights for salt water diving. In addition, the sub is very sensitive to the
pilot?s weight, and I found I had to make adjustments for that as well when
letting a friend take a turn.
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
Florida summer
that is simply not feasible on account of the temperatures in the cabin.
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 midnight, in
canals that weren?t wide enough to pass another boat, unable to stay within
channels or between bridge pylons, etc. The inability to steer led to damage
to the mechanical claw, the rudder, and the tow boat?s prop due to groundings.
In fact the towing issue was so
bad we got to do precious little diving, and never in the ?good? spots we were
shooting for, and we spent our days battling to get out to sea or back. The
greatest depth achieved was a miserable 10 feet! Snoopy will not be towed
again, I am going to undo my glassed-in ballast tanks and plan future trips to
locales that don?t require tows, even if the visibility is not as good as the
keys. The sub actually worked perfectly each time she got a chance to dive,
but those chances were exceedingly rare. The diving was not great but the trip
was well worth while as a learning experience. I hope this is useful to the
rest of you too!
Cheers,
Alec