[PSUBS-MAILIST] Islamorada Trip Report...

Thu Aug 24 18:09:03 EDT 2017

...and here's a little video. Unfortunately there was almost no footage of
Cliff's ocean dives. There was material about the joy rides in the canal,
so I picked one person (River) and put together some clips about his dives.

https://youtu.be/2xk8ZBUL4QY

Best,

Alec

On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 6:04 PM, Alan via Personal_Submersibles <
personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

> Thanks Cliff,
> brings back memories.
> How was the trim on the R300? Did it change as you moved forward
> through the water?
> Alan
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 25/08/2017, at 8:50 AM, Cliff Redus via Personal_Submersibles <
> personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:
>
> Just uploaded to Youtube a bunch of pictues from the 2017 PSUBS Regatta.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3xPUFGvYDM&t=5s
>
>
> Regards
>
> Cliff
>
> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 6:26 PM, Cliff Redus <cliffordredus at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Big thanks Doug for posting dive report and for you and your mom and dad
>> for hosting us last week. You guys  did a magnificent job. This was the
>> best sub trip of my life!
>>
>> I spend the day organizing the video and pictures from the trip
>> and mailed them to Alec who has graciously agree to edit into a video of
>> the 2017 Psub Regatta.
>>
>> I still need to review the data I logged from the trips but the key
>> points were the first ocean side dive was to the coral heads which is 3.9
>> miles from Doug's house so 7.8 miles total tow with average cabin temp of
>> 93F and RH of 80%.  Average speed was about 4.5 MPH.  As long as we
>> ran partially submerged to was hot but fine.  This was a test dive to
>> see if we could get out deeper.  Water was not clear at this location. The
>> deeper dive on Aug 3rd was out to the edge of the deep water.  The 7.8
>> miles from Doug's house (bay side) to the dive site was smooth and we ran
>> submerged so even thought the cabin temp and RH were high, it was not bad
>> at all as it was a smooth tow and there were thinks to see on way out. At
>> the second dive site the water was 100 ft deep and very clear with 4-6 ft
>> swells.  Could see the sub on the bottom from the Boston Whaler.  The tow
>> back was rough.  With 4-6 ft following seas, it was like being on a roller
>> coaster both in the boat and in the sub. Second dive had a total of 15.6
>> miles of towing at 4.5 MPH, 94F and 84% RH and hatch closed time of around
>> 5 hours.  I did not loose my cookies but it was close.
>>
>> As Doug noted, the consensus of all was that we need a tender vessel with
>> launch capability to get the subs out to the dive sites without towing.
>> Towing subs sucks.  All survived but I used up all my on board water and
>> upon making it back to the beach, consumed several gallon of water.  We
>> were all pretty whipped.  All  in all, it was quite an adventure.
>>
>> More latter.
>>
>> Cliff
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 4:53 PM, Douglas Suhr via Personal_Submersibles <
>> personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Personal_Submersibles mailing list
>>> Personal_Submersibles at psubs.org
>>> http://www.psubs.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/personal_submersibles
>>>
>>
>>
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