[PSUBS-MAILIST] First Launch

[Steve McQueen]

James, congrats!  I enjoyed the photos. Felt like I was there : )

Steve

---- James Frankland <jamesf at guernseysubmarine.com> wrote: 
> 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