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Hi Hugh. Like I mentioned to Dean, it will take a pretty big pontoon boat
to handle a heavy sub. Your calcs at 40 feet sound a little closer.
A strong frame to hold it all together could be made with "arches" on the
ends so you could drive the sub between the pontoons, and hoist the sub up. It
would be pretty massive though.
I visited the Delta Oceanographics team in Moss Landing last year and they
have a big ship ( 110 feet ) that they use for deploying their little delta sub.
It sits on the deck and gets lifted into the water with a boom crane. I bet that
ship burns 50 gallons an hour !
That's one of the great things about Phil's "Deep Workers". Their small
size and weight makes them very portable.
Moving a 6 ton sub across 50 miles of open ocean is going to require a
pretty big something.
Would it be possible to make a set of pontoons that would securely attach
to the sub's sides, thereby adding buoyancy to the sub to get it up enough to
reduce drag, but not right out of the water ?
Then a tow vehicle ( tug boat size ) could pull the sub/pontoon
assembly to where it's needed.
Maybe the pontoons could be inflated like a Zodiac boat.
Frank D.
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