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-- scuba-l members please reply to me personally --- Has anyone out there any news of the `Subskimmer' or anything similar? It is a RIB about 5 feet wide and about 15-20 feet long. It can plane deflated. It has: An arm across its front, hinged on at its middle, carrying at each end an electric motor called a `thruster' for travel underwater, driven by a bulky NiCd battery which is in a long wide tube in its keel (thus also acting as ballast keeping it stable maneuvering on the surface). Amidships a big box containing air pumps to inflate or deflate the boat, etc. Big air cylinders for the divers to breathe off and to inflate the boat quickly. For surface propulsion a petrol/gasoline outboard motor altered so its inlet and exhaust can be quickly sealed watertight against depth pressure. Surface speed 20 knots for 2.5 hours. Underwater speed 2.5 knots for 2 hours. Big battery not recharged from outboard motor? The thruster arm contains any extra kit like sonar and navigation instruments. Recommended crew 3, but larger versions could be made. Very flexible; it is a RIB that can transform into a submerged diver-rider and back!!! and you can take your boat down with you and you don't have to leave it and if anything happens (e.g. getting caught in a fast current) you can surface and you've got your boat with you at once. Subskimmer was started by an aqualung etc factory called Submarine Products Ltd (Hexham, Northumberland, England). This closed; Subskimmer was taken over by Defence Boats Ltd (also Hexham). This closed; Subskimmer (now named Kraken 90) (my last info is in Dec 1992) is/was being made by a firm (then small) called Serrico Ltd, La Hache, St.Martin St.Firmin, 27450 St.Georges du Vievre, France (probably in Normandy, probably in the departement de l'Eure). I feel that, to recover research costs, they badly overpriced it, hoping for a small highly paying naval and commando and patrol market. The last price for it that I heard of was 100,000 (yes, 1e5!!) UK pounds :-( :-( :-(, else it would likely have gone like hot cakes to diving centres and diving clubs etc!! Still perhaps there is still time for them to change their minds on this. Names: `Subskimmer' is Submarine Products's and Defence Boats's tradename for it. (Serrico now calls it Kraken 90. Beware confusion: part of the innards of the Carmellan SMS2000 automatic mixture rebreather is/was also called Kraken. The original Kraken was a legendary supergiant squid monster.) The name `Subskimmer' suggests its use better than `Kraken', so I keep on using the name `Subskimmer' here although it is not the current name. Please! Diving needs subskimmers! They sound incredibly handy! When <will> they become affordable!? Has anyone else heard of (1) anyone else making any sort or make of subskimmer or anything like one (in a factory, or some diving hobbyist subskimmerifying an ordinary RIB); (2) anyone using one; (3) any fictional uses of them (bibliographic reference please)?
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