[Member-Forum] First Launch

[Emile van Essen]

James ,

 

Congrats with the launch!. I was just wondering how far you were

Better to light than too heavy.. I hope next time nobody is complaining. I
got only positive reactions so far.

 

Emile

 

Ps. Would you come to the mainland if  we organise a European convention
again in the NL or germany?

 

  _____  

Van: Member-Forum [mailto:member-forum-bounces at psubs.org] Namens James
Frankland
Verzonden: dinsdag 22 oktober 2013 11:07
Aan: personal_submersibles at psubs.org; member-forum at psubs.org
Onderwerp: [Member-Forum] First Launch

 

Hi All,

 

I got my boat in the water at the weekend for the first time.  Put the
pictures up here.

 

http://www.guernseysubmarine.com/operations.htm

 

I didnt get any leaks at all, so i was super happy.  I wasnt really
expecting to try and dive and would have been happy with just no leaks and a
float test, but everything worked fine, so i gave it a go.  Unfortunately i
didnt have enough lead.  I added 90KG (198lb) of lead, but it still wouldnt
go down.  What i didnt mention on the website was that i was forced to stop
testing because the harbour master came along to say that they had had an
anonymous phone call from some bloody do-gooder who pointed out that we were
using the comercial area of the harbour and didnt have a proper comercial
dive team, which is officially a legal requirement.  So even though i had
full permission from the harbour, i was forced to stop on a technicality.
They think it was some missery that has the hump on with harbour and just
wanted to be awkward.  Shame because I was about to load a pile of anchor
chain into the boat to get me more weight.

 

The boat did seem to be very light at the back and i kept squirting air into
the forward tank to level it out.  Thinking about it, i suspect that the
forward tank was settling into the correct position and it was the aft tank
that was riding high.  Just need to get some weight at the back.  I had a
slight list to port as well which i've no idea where that came from.  Again
i will trim that up.

 

Anyway, i was really pleased with how it went on my first day.  Im meeting
my divers tonight who took a load of underwater pics apparently, so i will
see how they look later.  Might put some on the web if they are any good.

 

Kind Regards
James

 

 

 

 

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