Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Re: Nemo's Nautilus Concept Plan

Hi Bill,

Yes I thought of this scenario and here is my rational for having the flooding option. I expect to be ballasted to remain upright and there just may not be enough room under the boat to get out.

I see two options for not flooding the boat in a ballast tank failure scenario. One is the bottom hatch you mention, assuming there is room to get out and you have enough ballast control to keep her from listing to one side, depending on the nature of the failure and the bottom topography where this is occurring. The other is a watertight bulkhead (lockout chamber) and the top hatch.

I am trying to keep her under 10' beam and light enough to be pulled by a monster pickup. Albeit with a specialized trailer and wide permit but, offhand I think the lockout chamber would put me over the top.

That having been said, It would be neat to put in a real hatch on the bottom with a small skirt. Then you could close the top hatches on the surface, open the bottom hatch and in you go just like the movie version. I think I am going to need the floor space for batteries and or tankage.

Joe

From: "Akins" <lakins1@tampabay.rr.com>
Reply-To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
To: <personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Re: Nemo's Nautilus Concept Plan
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:57:56 -0400

Hi Joe.

You wrote..."And finally in the event there is a failure of the ballast tanks to blow or some other failure, a provision to flood the boat and exit one of two hatches would be made."

If you were stuck on the bottom and the interior of the boat was dry but you couldn't blow ballast to surface, why flood the boat just to get out? Then you ruin your interior unnecessarily.

As I was trying to explain to Myles, in an ambient design there would be no need to flood the boat to exit it if you have a bailout hole, box or trapdoor.

In a 1 atm design yes you would have to flood the interior if there was no diver lockout, but not an ambient. In the ambient design you could construct a trapdoor in the bottom or even just

an opening with a open box top that you could either open the trapdoor and jump out or even not have a door at all and just jump out thru the open box top. The slightly raised box top would

be just to keep water from splashing in. Remember your air pressure is going to keep the water out. But you can exit thru your gopher hole in the bottom, plus your body is already at the same

pressure as the outside water. Like Rick said, wear a weight belt and do a controlled accent. I suggest you release a buoy from the sub to the surface also for locating it later.

By doing this you save your interior if it was still dry and you just couldn't surface. Then you could come back and retrieve the boat without the interior being flooded.

Bill.