At Sub Races, Camaraderie Trumps Competition
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At Sub Races, Camaraderie Trumps Competition

18 teams field human-powered subs at David Taylor Model Basins.

The tents outside the Naval Surface Warfare Center model basins are part campsite, part race car pit.

Lined up along the east end of the massive tanks off Clara Barton Parkway, they house teams from Washington state, Texas, Florida, Montreal, and Delft, in the Netherlands. The team members alternate between lying in the sun passing around sandwiches and bags of chips, kicking soccer balls, and circling around their boats, discussing rudder trim and propeller pitch. They are drawn together by a simple challenge: to go 100 meters underwater, as fast as they can.

SOME 18 TEAMS came to the Potomac facility last week to compete in the eighth International Submarine Races, a biennial event started in 1989 and moved in 1995 to the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division — then known the David Taylor Model Basin.

Ed Liebolt has been involved with the races since 1989. His current team — Wheaton Submarine Works — is an independent group comprising current and former model basin employees. Liebolt’s team and the University of Maryland Sub Club are the race’s two local entrants.

“There is competition but it’s not fierce competition,” Liebolt said. “Some of the earlier races, there were some people getting heated and stuff but that hasn’t happened. The last few races, people have been really, really good.”

Wheaton Submarine Works has contributed to the tight-knit spirit of the race by entering Subtaxi. The two-person sub raced in 1997 and then was mothballed for eight years. This year, Liebolt’s team brought it back to offer rides to support divers and members of other teams whose subs were having problems.

The races were conceived as an educational event for ocean engineering students, companies, and private organizations. Students put their studies to a practical and fun application, and sponsoring organizations — including the Navy, get to meet prospective employees.

“The original idea remains the same as it was back in 1989 — to give young people to use what they have learned in school,” said John Hussey, a volunteer spokesman for the races, who formerly worked in the U.S. Senate as an ocean policy staffer. “Hopefully by having an experience like this, they will see the value of pursuing a career in ocean engineering or in the ocean in some fashion.”

The teams compete in one- and two-person submarines in propeller-driven and non-propeller-driven categories. The submarines must be human-powered, a restriction organizers say emphasizes advancements in design rather than bigger engines.

Inside the hangar-like basin building, wetsuits are standard attire. Nearly everyone involved in the races is a certified SCUBA diver. The submarines include integrated SCUBA tanks with enough air to make a 100-meter run plus 150 percent in reserve for each occupant. EMT and Navy support divers wait at both ends of the course and roving support divers — including team members between runs — move about underwater positioning the subs and filming the action.

A Navy boat sits on the surface as the subs shoot by below. In addition to reserve air, the subs must be designed with strobe lights, well-marked escape hatches, and a signal buoy that can be released in an emergency to let rescue divers know to move in.

Outside the tanks, family members watch on closed-circuit televisions and judges monitor the sophisticated timing system, which uses underwater video to pinpoint the exact camera frame at which each sub passes through the start and finish lines.

Team members make final adjustments to their submarines on partially submerged wooden ramps at one end of the tanks. They move to deeper water one at a time and use a 100-foot run-up area to get moving before passing through the starting gate and following underwater lighting up the course.

The subs vary from about 10-20 feet in length with cross-sections just large enough to accommodate one or two people lying face down with their tanks. Most are made of fiberglass or composite materials and use bicycle pedals linked to propeller crankshafts linked for propulsion.

There are no head-to-head races and there is no set order to the runs. Each submarine is allowed to make as many runs as they can during the five-day race period. Speed records are based on the subs’ best overall times, and there are also awards for overall performance, best design outline, best use of composites, and innovation.

The University of Delft team’s submarine includes and onboard computer that measures the RPM output of the driver pedaling inside and, as he begins to tire near the end of the 100-meter underwater course, adjusts the trim of the propeller to compensate.

The high-school students from Sussex County Technical School in New Jersey had a lower-tech, if no less creative design innovation — ping pong balls. The interior of their 12-foot craft holds 2500 of the balls in mesh sacks as a ballast system.

The range of sophistication demonstrates the wide net that the race casts.

There are perennial leaders like the OMER team from the Ecole de Technologie Superieure in Montreal which holds several speed records and there are high school, community college, and independent teams for whom designing and building a viable sub is an accomplishment in itself.

“Some of these teams that have never been here, just to make a successful run is a big deal,” Hussey said. “There are 200 things that can go wrong with every single submarine. The trim could be off. The ballast can be wrong. The fins are not working, the joystick breaks.”

Such challenges breed camaraderie — not competitiveness — among the teams.

“They … share information with one another. A team with a broken prop, might get a spare part from another team,” Hussey said.

“It’s really a great race,” said Francois Geuskens, leader of the University of Delft team. “Everybody’s helping everybody.”

Geuskens and the Delft team are vying for a world speed record — a major accomplishment for race newcomers. The Dutch flag flies over their tent as team members discuss problems with the hydrodynamic varnish that’s chipping away from the exterior of the their sub.