[PSUBS-MAILIST] Islamorada Trip Report...

[Douglas Suhr via Personal_Submersibles]

Greetings PSUBS group, Douglas Suhr here to share my take on the 4-day
sub operation we just completed in Islamorada, FL (July 31st, August
1-3).

Wow, what a whirlwind! So July 31st was really an arrival / setup day
with August 1-3 being true operational days. Though it was unfortunate
that Alec wasn't able to make it with Shackleton, we had our hands
full with Cliff's R-300. Without Shackleton, we also had enough time
to get Snoopy set up and lowered into the canal for some basic diving.

List of Crew: Dan Lance, Steve McQueen, Cliff Redus, Rick Maxwell,
River Dolfi, Mike Patterson, Doug, Sarah, Douglas Suhr.

This was my first time meeting Dan Lance, a (retired) saturation diver
and commercial welder. What a pleasure to have him join us on this
operation. Dan is modest, but most willing to share his knowledge and
extensive experience with a newbie like me. So pleased to have chatted
with him in the Keys. During the towing of the R-300, Dan manned the
tow line and helped with comms.

Steve McQueen and River Dolfi did awesome jobs as our frog men.
Filming, attaching / detaching davit and tow lines, etc. they were
both in and out of the water quite a bit (especially Steve). I think
River took a little jelly sting for the team. What troopers!

Cliff and his assistant Rick are such a joy be around. Rick is one of
the friendliest people you'll ever meet (and even brought a gift for
the group: a watermelon, straight from Texas!). Cliff is always
willing to share his expertise (and sub, too) with anyone who'd like
to learn more. I know that between Dan Lance and Cliff, I learned more
than I can remember last week.

Mike Patterson, mom, dad and myself were all just providing whatever
kind of "troop support" we could to Cliff and the R-300.

River, Steve and Myself got in some dive time on Snoopy in the canal
(which was great), but I think the biggest accomplishment was getting
the R-300 out a ways into the ocean.

Our Boston Whaler (a 25' boat with a single 250hp Yamaha) was able to
tow the R-300 out about 5 miles into the ocean (at about 4mph). We
were in radio communication with Cliff most of the time, though we did
suffer a few intermittent losses in comms. When we got to a spot about
100 feet deep, we started to slow down a bit and at that point the tow
line hook (an admittedly cheap thing) let loose(!) so we decided that
we had reached our dive location. We switched from marine radio to OTS
and Cliff started down. Visibility was supurb! As Cliff neared the
bottom at 100 − 110 feet, he was still quite visible from the Whaler!
His 18 foot long R-300 looked to be about 3 inches long, but wow did
it ever stand out from the rest of the sandy bottom. Cliff spent about
an hour "flying" his sub, surfacing, diving and maneuvering about,
testing systems and observing the ocean around him. By the time Cliff
surfaced and we towed back to port Antigua, elapsed time stood at 4.5
/ 5 hours (estimate). Cliff said that he stayed cool by the water
flowing over the sub's dome hatch while in tow. Upon returning I think
we were all ready to take a break, but everyone felt great
accomplishment with the mission.

A couple of lessons I took away from the tow out: We need better tow
equipment (better line, hardware and maybe a quick release). Our boat
REALLY needs a GPS (still don't have one). Towing into waves isn't so
much a problem, but when towing with the waves, our tow line needs to
be measured so as to sustain the proper distance between tow vessel
and sub (otherwise the sub and boat are constantly slacking and then
jerking, stressing the tow line and making it difficult for boat and
sub to track straight).

The devotion of our crew was amazing, even in the heat and the waves
everyone did their jobs. Managing even a small sub operation like this
is more work / effort than meets the eye, that's for sure. At dinner,
one of the main discussions revolved around a support vessel that can
carry a sub or two on board, eliminating the slow, time consuming tow
out to an ocean dive site. Dan Lance shared details on his support
vessel project, which is no doubt going to be a dream in terms of
logistics. Hopefully when said vessel is ready to sail, Dan will lend
its services to host a diving event! ~ Douglas S.