Hello Jon
I really like the idea to keep the boat in the caribbean for the 2010 psubs convention.
The drawback is, that Ian will probably not be so happy with that, and wants it in the Pacific (California) as soon as possible.
So i was calculating that 2010 it should be there.
What is installed of the propusion equipment is shaft, screw (raw) 2 rudder shafts and most of the rudder blades.
According to the "keep in comfort zone" principle, harbor captains, ambiental authorities, etc. are much more comfortable when the hull touches water without a engine installed, and no tanks, it also keeps police more comfortable to know the boat could not possibly start engine and disappear over night. Additionally the search for smuggle goods is easy if the hull is barren inside, and last but not least if there is any filtering a repair is simple working with a "spin around" manouver.
Ian wanted a double hatch configuration with 2 hatches 100cm diameter each in front and behind the thickest hull point (mainframe).
Your request of interior photos really brings me into trouble. Publishing a photo of the raw barren hull with tools and materials around, crude concrete walls, looks a bit like a mine or a tunnel. It is like publishing a photo of Heidi Klum with no make up in the morning - it is just "image wrecking"...
Henrik Kindblom and the rest of the swedish team is in the task to rise investor and bank money in Sweden for future projects to come - so i have a image to maintain, and by Good, the standards that you guys have set here are really high!
We have seen kittrige and other boats with a superior paint finish, that can stand beside any ferrari, we have seen great u-boot interiors, and the worldbest from Phil - in style and funktion.
So i would get red of shame publishing something here before my "panel man" had his chance to work the interior a bit over. The best thing i can offer on a "impression of the interior" is the picture at:
http://imulead.com/tolimared/concretesubmarine/image/bc-inside.jpg
It is the 20 ton prototype with a raw plywood paneling - close to a sauna outfit - quite poor compared with a typical private airplane interior, a yacht or a car interior, but i think it paints the general ambient picture. In Ian`s boat the light conditions are even much better - so i am sure - after the panel man is done, it will be spectacular.
What concerns graphic material i already have exposed myself quite a lot by publishing hull shots with no yacht finish at all - but sometimes you can not go 100% what marketing would require.
I have a collection of pictures and graphic material - it is constantly updated with the newest developments in the project.
Wil,
Next year we'll be in Florida so you wouldn't have to pass through the Panama Canal.
Is there propulsion installed yet? I don't recall the details on the motor. Also, I couldn't tell where the hatch was located by the photos. Is it on the aft end? It would be great if you could take some quick photos of the interior as it is right now and post them someplace where we could look at them.
Jon
Wilfried Ellmer wrote:
Hello Jon,
Thanks for your congrats.
To bring it to the 2010 convention it has to go trough the panama canal - the reaction of naval authorities to the boat is certainly one of the big "yet to test" aspects of the project.
For the moment we have a building permit, we report building and movement status to 4 different colombian authorities on a monthly base.
So we are good in colombia, but we have not yet any pronoucement of the panama canal authority and it would be bad timing and management to go for it now.
Obviously the boat will fit into the canal measures and it will make the required speed to pass without jamming the traffic - but in the end it will depend on the personal evaluation of the pilots if they will let us go. If we come in "surfing on a wave of newspaper articles" it will help.
Anyhow the project "doing international trips" is still a bit far away. Next goal is bringing it to water and do limited trips under strikt supervision of the local authorities that already know about our project and support it to a certain point.
As Peter showed with Nautilus, if you do the right local management such a project must not necessarily be a subject of all kind of "show stopping intents" by authorities but can be supported, wanted, and even be a public event.
It is of utmost importance to keep anybody in his "comfort zone". Part of that is, that you do things "gradually" instead of "quick and surprisingly". This imposes sometimes "speed limits" on a project.
It also imposes "social viability limits" - it is not wise to step up and say " hi i am wil, i am a submadman i build a giant private submarine, i do it because i can, please underwrite that..."
So it has been necessary to come up with a "corporate face and structure" especially since we left no doubt that we see the boat as start of a series building. We founded "European Submarine Structures AB" registered in Stockholm Sweden and we opened a colombian subsidiary in Cartagena.
We have a legal, technical, financial advisory board, so the argument "beware - crazy guy - stop it" does not apply so easy as it did before.
You see "working on the proyect" in our case is not only a "engineering thing" - engineering and trials is sometimes the least challanging and time consuming part.
It is a lot easier to come up with a working shaft seal, than to shut the mouth of the "funny guy" who likes to present private submarines as smuggling vessels and prepares the ground to get your project "regulated out of existance".
The work shedule at the moment contains a long movement to the water (4 boat length) in which we will probably not have support by shipyard infrastructure, heavy cranes, and similar equipment so this is pure human power, hydraulic jacks, at 35 degree heat, - some 30-100cm per day - it will take a while but keep anybody in comfort zone.
The viewport holes contain plugs for now so we can take the hull to water with no "open holes" the nose contains a flange where Ian is planning to place a acrylic dome port.
The sea trials - i would like to have a lot of time to do them because i have a lot of questions that i am curious to get a answer for. So i would like to test out a lot of screw (propeller) configurations to optimize the fuel performance, i also would like to test superstructure fairing configurations, diverse snorkel configurations, tandem concepts, bio life support and, and...
I also would like to have some versions of interior configuration - make high quality professional photos of all that, so that i can publish them in "yacht magazine" whithout looking like "ugly duck" beside the swans.
...But i expect that Ian will press me to keep a tight shedule, do the most necessary crude work, and hand the boat over as soon as possible - i would.
So except Ian comes down here, falls in love with tropical caribbean cartagena, the cristal waters, and the beautiful palm islands, the wonderful beaches, etc.etc. and decides to live here for a while, or adopt cartagena as vacation and yachting destination - i will probably not get a chance to do all this in this project.
Wil************************************************************************
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