Underwater aeroplanes: the new toy for the super rich

Renowned submersible designer Graham Hawkes and co-pilot Lee Behel go on a surreal adventure in the DeepFlight Super Falcon submersible.
Using their hydrophones and their wits, our intrepid explorers cruise the underwater valleys of Hawaii in an attempt to capture a whale song.

The DeepFlight Super Falcon submersible was designed, built and operated by Hawkes Ocean Technologies

From The Telegraph (by Lucy Kinder)

The billionaires who crowded into the Monaco yacht show wanted to see more than just Rupert Murdoch's $29.7m superyacht Rosehearty which was recently announced to be up for sale.

They found a new gadget to play with - the DeepFlight Super Falcon underwater aeroplane.

The founder of Red Bull Dietrich Mateschitz bought one last month at a cost of $1.7 million and he joins venture capitalist Thomas Perkins, once owner of the world's biggest yacht.

Its designer is London-born marine engineer Graham Hawkes who creates submersibles that look like they should come straight out of a James Bond film.

In fact one of his designs, the Mantis, was used in 'For Your Eyes Only'.

 Graham Hawkes, the designer of DeepFlight, cruising and diving with Sir Richard Branson, rear, off Guadalupe Island 

Photo: Amos Nachoum

Hawkes originally built what he describes as "normal" submersibles for the oil and gas industry, and for the military, before realising that he could develop the technology to fly underwater.
Built with 8.8 feet wide wings, and able to go to a depth of 1600 feet the Super Falcon can 'fly' underwater using a "downward lift" motion rather than sinking and rising like traditional submarines.
The craft is able to stay positively buoyant despite travelling at depth at a speed of four to five knots.
If the engines are turned off (or it crashes) it simply floats back up to the surface.
Hawkes says that unlike more conventional submarines the Super Falcon is incredibly quiet so it attracts sea life rather than scares it away.

The Monaco yacht show was the first time the Super Falcons have been marketed to the public and Hawkes said there is already "considerable" interest from potential buyers.
"These are very wealthy individuals getting extraordinary machines that can go and do really cool things."
The Super Falcon takes two people - although Hawkes says potential owners can order a three person model.
Richard Branson has already bought one of Hawkes' creations for his own personal use, as well as taking on the DeepFlight Challenger, a submarine designed to travel to the deepest depths of the ocean.
The Challenger was originally designed for Steve Fossett but after he died in 2007 Branson took on the project.
Ultimately James Cameron beat Branson's team and became the first human to venture to the deepest point of the ocean solo.
For those who don't have enough zeros on the end of their pay packet to buy one Hawkes does charter out the Super Falcon at a cost of $10,000 per day.
King Abdullah II of Jordan hired it for six weeks and invited local dignitaries, as well as schoolchildren, aboard.

 Deepflight's cockpit 

photo David Bush

Pilot training programmes cost $15,000 for three days and it's Hawkes himself who issues the certificates.
He says the fact that underwater flying is such a new enterprise makes it much harder to regulate:
"In the early years of aeroplanes nobody had licenses, nobody knew what the regulations were so we are right in that era of starting up something so new that nobody really knows what needs to be done.
"The rules and regulations are a little bit murky."

When Hawkes and Richard Branson took a dive in it last year they came face to face with a great white shark whose fin was just inches from the Super Falcon's wing.
Hawkes said: "There was some risk, we had discussed that. Nobody really knew what was going to happen.
"When you do things for the first time you really don’t know what to expect."
"She certainly could have chewed off a wing but we didn’t think she could really harm us."

The vehicle is equipped with emergency 'gas bags' to enable it to surface quickly and 24 hours of life support, although the batteries that operate it only have enough energy for eight hours.
Hawkes is hoping, eventually that the underwater plane will be seen at luxury resorts since it does not necessarily require s launch vehicle.
He does concede that the biggest market is among superyacht owners.
Having a giant yacht is apparently no longer enough for the world's wealthiest individuals- they want to do more exciting activities.
Hawkes has some competition.

He may be the only engineer flying underwater but there were three other submarine vendors at the Monaco yacht show this year - all for the first time.

C-Explorer 2 submersible with 100 meter depth-rating diving near Gozo Island.

In July the Netherlands-based U-boat Worx took Russian President Vladimir Putin to sea a shipwreck in the Gulf of Finland using one of their submersibles.
Their models can hold between two and five people and sink to between 100m and 1 000m underwater.

Triton's efforts to complete the Triton 36000/3 Full Ocean Depth Submersible.

Rival Triton is manufacturing similar craft.

But none of these, says Hawkes, resemble aeroplanes and allow their pilots to play with animals.
"The Super Falcon is built for incredible new encounters, and we are having them. Most people have never been able to experience anything like it before."

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : 'Super Falcon' submarine aims to fly underwater / Branson set to travel to ocean bottom / The last dive? Funding for human expeditions in the ocean may have run aground

NOAA to end printing paper nautical charts

Electronic navigational charts are increasingly popular with commercial pilots around the world.
Still, NOAA sells about 60,000 of the old 4-by-3-foot lithographic maps each year
for about $20 apiece, the same amount it costs to print them.

From NOAA (NOAA news)

NOAA's Office of Coast Survey, which creates and maintains the nation's suite of a thousand nautical charts of U.S. coastal waters, has announced major changes ahead for mariners and others who use nautical charts.
Starting April 13, 2014, the federal government (actually the FAA Federal Aviation Administration which took over federal chart-making in 1999) will no longer print traditional lithographic (paper) nautical charts.

 Most mariners now use Print-on-Demand nautical charts

that are up-to-date to the moment of printing.

Since 1862, those lithographic nautical charts—available in marine shops and other stores—have been printed by the U.S. government and sold to the public by commercial vendors.

The decision to stop production is based on several factors:

• the declining demand for lithographic charts,
• the increasing use of digital and electronic charts,
• and federal budget realities. 

"Like most other mariners, I grew up on NOAA lithographic charts and have used them for years," said Rear Admiral Gerd Glang, director of NOAA's Office of Coast Survey.
"We know that changing chart formats and availability will be a difficult change for some mariners who love their traditional paper charts."

"With the end of traditional paper charts, our primary concern continues to be making sure that boaters, fishing vessels, and commercial mariners have access to the most accurate, up-to-date nautical chart in a format that works well for them," said Capt. Shep Smith, chief of Coast Survey's Marine Chart Division.
"Fortunately, advancements in computing and mobile technologies give us many more options than was possible years ago."

Most mariners now use Print-on-Demand nautical charts that are up-to-date to the moment of printing.

These charts will continue to be available from NOAA-certified printers.

It costs NOAA about $100 million a year to survey and chart the nation's waters.
NOAA will still spend the same money but continue to create and maintain other forms of nautical charts, including the increasingly popular Print-on-Demand (POD) charts, updated paper charts available from NOAA-certified printers (through OceanGrafix or East View Geospatial).

NOAA electronic navigational charts (NOAA ENC^®) and raster navigational charts (NOAA RNC^®), used in a variety of electronic charting systems, are also updated weekly and are available for free download from the Coast Survey website.

NOAA announced a new product as well: full-scale PDF (Portable Digital Format) nautical charts, available for free download on a trial basis.

The world of navigation is benefitting from advances in technology, Smith explained.
He said that NOAA will consult with chart users and private businesses about the future of U.S. navigation, especially exploring the use of NOAA charts as the basis for new products.

Links :

• NOAA :  Effective April 13, 2014, government stops lithographic printing of NOAA nautical charts (FAQ)

Who is first to go to the Arctic will be a 21st century leader : Russia to apply for extension of Arctic Shelf Boundaries in 2014

From ArcticInfo I / II

Who is first to go to the Arctic will be a 21st century leader. (see Wikipedia : Territorial claims in the Arctic)
This opinion was expressed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in Vladivostok at a forum on the protection of Russia’s strategic interests in the Far East.

In his words, civilian ships and marine technology for the development of the Arctic will be built with the use of high technology and with the help of modern robotics.
Rogozin noted the critical importance of production being focused on the Arctic region.

Map of the Arctic or North Pole ('Northern Regions' by Joseph Hutchins Colto, 1855)

“The Arctic has huge resources, which will attract great nations more and more in the face of declining access to energy. Countries that are not going to reduce their consumption level will focus on the Arctic,” the official believes.

According to Rogozin, who is first is not empty words, but machinery, ships, marine systems and platforms in the Arctic will make the 21st century leader.
The Arctic region, according to the Russian Vice Premier, will be occupied by the one who demonstrates “master talent”.

Previously, Rogozin has urged shipbuilders to pay particular attention to civil orders intended for work on the Arctic Shelf.

 Area of the continental shelf of the Russian Federation in the Arctic Ocean

beyond 200-nautical-mile zone (UN)

In 2014, Russia plans to submit an application for extension of the boundaries of the continental Arctic Shelf to the special UN Commission after modifying and reinforcing the application by the results of additional research.

It was announced by Denis Khramov, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of Russia.
The Deputy Minister recalled that Russia had already applied for extension of the territories in the Barents, Bering and Okhotsk seas, as well as in the Central Arctic Ocean.
The Commission generally recognized the application as meeting the requirements but requested the Russian Federation to provide an additional proof that the ranges of Lomonosov and Mendeleev, going beyond the boundaries of our official continental shelf, belong to the Mainland.

 >>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

"If we are to prove that these ranges are part of the Mainland lower slope, we will be guaranteed by international law the authority to increase the limits of our continental shelf," said the official.

Denis Khramov said that Russia had signed a special Convention on the law of the sea, under which the establishment of the outer boundary of the continental shelf of any state is the main guarantee of securing the rights of the country's natural resources situated within the continental shelf.

After the adoption of the Convention, Russia was the first to submit its application for establishment of the outer boundary on the outside of the standard 200 nautical miles.
So called "baselines" of the boundary, that is, those points on which the land border of any country is fixed, serve as a start for the 200 miles to be measured from, and ownership of the territories beyond them is to be proved by a state concerned in an established order.

Links :

• ArcInfo : The expedition “Arctic-2012” collected enough material to expand the borders of the continental shelf belonging to the Russian Federation
• Scientific American : Law of the Sea? Nations rush to claim seabed from Pole to Pole 
• USCG : Proceedings vol70 n°2 Summer2013 'The Arctic'
• Geopolital Monitor : Arctic ownership claims
• Durham University : Maritime juridiction and boundaries in the Arctic region
• UNEP : Continental shelf
• Russian Geographical Society : The Arctic : territory of dialog

The ocean is broken : a Fukushima reality

Ivan Macfadyen aboard the Funnel Web

From TheHerald

IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it.
Not the absence of sound, exactly.
The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging.
The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.
And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.
What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.
The birds were missing because the fish were missing.

The journey

Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.
"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.
But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.
No fish.
No birds.
Hardly a sign of life at all.
"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.
"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

McFadyen sets sights on Osaka race finish

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.
North of the equator, up above New Guinea, the ocean-racers saw a big fishing boat working a reef in the distance.
"All day it was there, trawling back and forth. It was a big ship, like a mother-ship," he said.

And all night it worked too, under bright floodlights.
And in the morning Macfadyen was awoken by his crewman calling out, urgently, that the ship had launched a speedboat.
"Obviously I was worried. We were unarmed and pirates are a real worry in those waters. I thought, if these guys had weapons then we were in deep trouble."
But they weren't pirates, not in the conventional sense, at least. The speedboat came alongside and the Melanesian men aboard offered gifts of fruit and jars of jam and preserves.
"And they gave us five big sugar-bags full of fish," he said.
"They were good, big fish, of all kinds. Some were fresh, but others had obviously been in the sun for a while.
"We told them there was no way we could possibly use all those fish. There were just two of us, with no real place to store or keep them. They just shrugged and told us to tip them overboard. That's what they would have done with them anyway, they said.
"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."

Macfadyen felt sick to his heart.
That was one fishing boat among countless more working unseen beyond the horizon, many of them doing exactly the same thing.
No wonder the sea was dead.
No wonder his baited lines caught nothing.
There was nothing to catch.
If that sounds depressing, it only got worse.

NOAA has mapped all marine debris sightings reported to DisasterDebris@noaa.gov

as possible tsunami debris, using NOAA's ERMA® tool.

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.
"After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead," Macfadyen said.
"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening."
"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen."

In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.
"Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it's still out there, everywhere you look."

Ivan's brother, Glenn, who boarded at Hawaii for the run into the United States, marvelled at the "thousands on thousands" of yellow plastic buoys.
The huge tangles of synthetic rope, fishing lines and nets. Pieces of polystyrene foam by the million. And slicks of oil and petrol, everywhere.

 The University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center created a graphic showing the projected dispersion of debris from Japan

Countless hundreds of wooden power poles are out there, snapped off by the killer wave and still trailing their wires in the middle of the sea.
"In years gone by, when you were becalmed by lack of wind, you'd just start your engine and motor on," Ivan said.
Not this time.
"In a lot of places we couldn't start our motor for fear of entangling the propeller in the mass of pieces of rope and cable. That's an unheard of situation, out in the ocean.
"If we did decide to motor we couldn't do it at night, only in the daytime with a lookout on the bow, watching for rubbish.
"On the bow, in the waters above Hawaii, you could see right down into the depths. I could see that the debris isn't just on the surface, it's all the way down. And it's all sizes, from a soft-drink bottle to pieces the size of a big car or truck.
"We saw a factory chimney sticking out of the water, with some kind of boiler thing still attached below the surface. We saw a big container-type thing, just rolling over and over on the waves.
"We were weaving around these pieces of debris. It was like sailing through a garbage tip.
"Below decks you were constantly hearing things hitting against the hull, and you were constantly afraid of hitting something really big. As it was, the hull was scratched and dented all over the place from bits and pieces we never saw."

Plastic was ubiquitous.
Bottles, bags and every kind of throwaway domestic item you can imagine, from broken chairs to dustpans, toys and utensils.
And something else.
The boat's vivid yellow paint job, never faded by sun or sea in years gone past, reacted with something in the water off Japan, losing its sheen in a strange and unprecedented way.

 Radioactive water from Fukushima is systematically poisoning the entire Pacific Ocean
On March 30, 2011, the Japan Central News Agency reported the monitored radioactive pollutions that were 4000 times higher than the standard level.
Whether or not these nuclear pollutants will be transported to the Pacific-neighboring countries through oceanic circulations becomes a world-wide concern.
The time scale of the nuclear pollutants reaching the west coast of America is 3.2 years if it is estimated using the surface drifting buoys and 3.9 years if it is estimated using the nuclear pollutant particulate tracers.
The half life of cesium-137 is so long that it produces more damage to human.
Figure above gives the examples of the distribution of the impact strength of Cesium-137
at year 1.5 (panel (a)), year 3.5 (panel (b)), and year 4 (panel (c)).

BACK in Newcastle, Ivan Macfadyen is still coming to terms with the shock and horror of the voyage.
"The ocean is broken," he said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief.
Recognising the problem is vast, and that no organisations or governments appear to have a particular interest in doing anything about it, Macfadyen is looking for ideas.
He plans to lobby government ministers, hoping they might help.
More immediately, he will approach the organisers of Australia's major ocean races, trying to enlist yachties into an international scheme that uses volunteer yachtsmen to monitor debris and marine life.
Macfadyen signed up to this scheme while he was in the US, responding to an approach by US academics who asked yachties to fill in daily survey forms and collect samples for radiation testing - a significant concern in the wake of the tsunami and consequent nuclear power station failure in Japan.
"I asked them why don't we push for a fleet to go and clean up the mess," he said.
"But they said they'd calculated that the environmental damage from burning the fuel to do that job would be worse than just leaving the debris there."

Links :

• NOAA : Japan tsunami marine debris 
• RT : Radioactivity level spikes 6,500 times at Fukushima well, radioactive water flowing into Pacific Ocean 
• National GeoGraphic : Great Pacific garbage patch, Pacific trash vortex 
• CNES : Fukushima - Forecasting radiation dispersal at sea

Beyond the West Horizon

Trailer: Beyond the West Horizon from TheSailingChannel.TV

In the late 1950's, very few "middle class" sailors had taken small sailing craft on long voyages. British Sailors, Eric and Susan Hiscock became pioneers in making long trans-oceanic passages in a small sailboat to what was then quite remote destinations.

Their sailing adventures paved the way for future generations of cruising sailors who would follow in their wake, making blue water passage-making the more common experience it has become today.

The Hiscocks shared their sailing adventures in several books and made this 16mm color documentary about their second circumnavigation aboard their 30 foot sloop, Wanderer III.

The couple departed from Yarmouth Isle of Wight on the 19th of July 1959 and returned on August 8th, 1962. Prior to their departure, the BBC provided some camera training, a 16mm windup camera, and 4000 feet of color film stock.

During their 30,189 mile circumnavigation, Eric and Susan meticulously filmed their voyage and their many land falls.

On their return, the BBC edited a 91-minute documentary based on a script and narration written by Eric.

The finished film aired on BBC television in January 1963.
Working with the Beaulieu Film and Video Library at the UK National Motor Museum Trust, TheSailingChannel.TV has restored "Beyond the West Horizon" and digitally remastered it to HD.