From: "Jay K. Jeffries" <bottomgun@mindspring.com>
Reply-To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
To: <personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] NEWS ARTICLE: For sub hobbyists, smugglers' craft
is subpar
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:01:47 -0500
Found this in a link to the Pittsburgh Gazette.
Respectfully,
Jay K. Jeffries
Andros Is., Bahamas
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without
accepting it.
- <http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1152.html> Aristotle
For sub hobbyists, smugglers' craft is subpar
Thursday, November 30, 2006
By Jennifer Saranow, The Wall Street Journal
This month, the Coast Guard detained four men who were allegedly trying to
smuggle 3.5 tons of cocaine meant for the U.S. News accounts of the Nov. 16
bust, about 90 miles southwest of Costa Rica, described their unusual
vessel
as a 50-foot homemade fiberglass submarine.
That caught the attention of a busy netherworld of hobbyists who build
submarines in their garages.
"The captured drug-sub appears to be amateurish in construction and not
nearly as seaworthy as the subs we have seen, designed and built," said Jon
Wallace, a software engineer for Hewlett-Packard in Weare, N.H. In 1996 he
cofounded the Personal Submersibles Organization, which now counts about
13,000 visitors per month to its Web site, psubs.org.
"Semi-submersible at best," sniffed another critic in a posting on the
group's site.
After reading reports and seeing photographs of the captured vessel,
hobbyists concluded that the gray drug craft was crudely constructed and
not
a serious attempt at building a submarine. Some said it was more a boat
meant to blend into the water, skim just below the surface, travel long
distances and avoid radar detection. A giveaway was that it was made of
fiberglass -- which is generally not a good material for building a
submersible vessel, they say. It also had a squarish design rather than the
cylindrical shape required to withstand pressure and stress.
Law-enforcement agencies from Colombia to California are increasingly
worried about drug-stuffed submarines slinking along beneath the seas. "We
are out there actively searching for these," says Capt. Thomas Cullen,
chief
of response for the U.S. Coast Guard 11th District based in Alameda,
Calif.,
which oversaw the boarding and seizing of the vessel off Costa Rica. It was
the first manned sub-like vehicle seized by the U.S., according to Capt.
Cullen. Authorities in Colombia have seized a couple of homemade subs in
the
past two years.
Costa Rican authorities say that the vessel seized this month was
gasoline-powered, and that it traveled just below the surface with the crew
using snorkel-type tubes to breathe. "Certainly these guys are not PSUBS
regulars. Gasoline engines in a submersible are no-nos," wrote Ray Keefer,
45 years old, a computer test engineer in Gaston, Ore., and co-founder of
the group. Gasoline engines would be dangerous in a submarine. The Coast
Guard says its reports indicate the seized craft had a diesel engine.
Mr. Keefer and others believe the captured vessel should more accurately be
called a "David boat," a type of torpedo boat used during the Civil War
that
operated mostly underwater with only its smokestack and a few inches of
hull
visible above the surface. "Mostly underwater but not a submersible," he
wrote.
James Huffman, 28, a warehouse laborer in Tacoma, Wash., and submarine
history buff who first got interested in submarines while playing the "Up
Periscope!" computer game in eighth grade, says the craft reminded him of
the gasoline- and battery-powered USS Holland from around 1900, the U.S.
Navy's first commissioned submarine.
Man's fascination with exploring the underwater world dates back at least
to
Alexander the Great, who according to legend descended beneath the waves in
some kind of glass globe. Experimentation with underwater craft continued
in
the 1500s through the 1700s.
In more recent history, sub-like craft were first used militarily in the
U.S. during the Revolutionary War. Modern diesel and battery-powered
designs
appeared during the two World Wars, and in 1954, the era of true submarines
that can stay submerged for long periods emerged with the nuclear-powered
USS Nautilus.
Hobbyists have been building homemade subs for years with the help of plans
in magazines like Popular Mechanics and designs from men like former naval
submarine captain George Kittredge, whom some hobbyists consider the
founder
of the homemade-sub craft. The advent of the Internet brought sub fans
together and let them share designs and tips.
Enthusiasts liken their submarine-building work, which can cost $15,000 or
more and take many years, to building an airplane or a boat from scratch.
While it is possible to buy design plans, no catalogs exist for parts.
Builders have to cook them up at home. For prices ranging from about
$70,000
to $1 million or more, companies like U.S. Submarines Inc. and
Netherlands-based U-Boat Worx offer ready-made submarines that are popular
with yacht owners looking for another toy.
Some sub enthusiasts question why smugglers would use a submarine in the
first place since subs are slow and must surface. "I could see somebody
towing a submersible below a cargo ship," wrote one on the psubs.org Web
site and electronic mailing list. George Slaterpryce, 28, a software
engineer in Ocala, Fla., suggested that "a true smuggling submarine" would
"have to be something that cruises at 60 feet or so (just deep enough not
to
be easily noticed)," be constructed of lightweight materials and powered by
a relatively silent motor and have enough air for days of submersion.
Members of the Personal Submersibles Organization recognize that the
submersibles they build are not technically submarines, according to some
definitions. Most homemade-sub hobbyists build one- and two-passenger steel
subs that resemble 10-foot- to 15-foot-long propane tanks in shape with
view
ports. These subs are called 1ATMs, or 1 atmosphere subs, because they,
like
military subs, maintain basically the same air pressure inside as at sea
level. Depending on the design, 1ATMs can descend 350 feet or more, travel
at speeds up to about five miles an hour and stay underwater for at least
an
hour.
Alec Smyth, 42, of Alexandria, Va., a director of client services at
software company Compuware Corp., has two subs of his own, one that
descends
to 250 feet and the other, still in construction, to 700 feet. He says sub
hobbyists have one thing in common: "We all watched way too many Cousteau
movies as kids."