[Member-Forum] First Launch

[James Frankland]

I had all permission to use the harbour from the authorities, no problems.
They were really helpful and several of them came down to have a look.
That area where i was is normally only for fuel tankers so i was well out
of the way of people.  The complaint came from a dopey member of the public
who phoned in saying i didnt have "proper" commercial divers.  As this
person didnt leave a name, we suspect it is someone who is angry with the
harbour authorities for something and just wanted to be awkward with the
harbour.  As such, they were forced to stop the dive.  They did say that if
i went and got a commercial diver, i could carry on, but that would have
been awkward at short notice.





On 22 October 2013 13:21, hank pronk <hanker_20032000 at yahoo.ca> wrote:

>  Hi James,
> Well done, that is a fine looking sub.  That was a pretty classy sub test,
> crane and all.  I am surprised someone complained.  Most people are very
> interested to see a sub launch and it usually draws a crowd.
> Hank
>
>   *From:* James Frankland <jamesf at guernseysubmarine.com>
> *To:* personal_submersibles at psubs.org; member-forum at psubs.org
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 22, 2013 3:06:49 AM
> *Subject:* [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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