Talk a Little, Learn a Lot

Greetings, and welcome to talk a little, learn a lot, the American Society of Naval Engineers podcast. I am your host, Steven Phillips. In this podcast, we talk a little and learn a lot about naval engineering while inspiring the next generation of STEM professionals. Today, I'm joined by captain Jerry Rovner, US Navy retired, to discuss the international submarine races to be held at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carter Rock, June twenty second through the twenty seventh. Captain Rovner, Jerry, thank you for joining me on the podcast.

I look forward to this discussion.

Thank you especially for putting us on the map again. It's very, very important that people understand what we do, especially now in this day of STEM programs and giving a a good group of people to fill the pipeline of, engineers going forward.

Absolutely. And I'm also excited because I must tell the ASNI audience that I'm particularly fired up about this topic because I'm an alumnus of the international submarine races. Not clear in that name is these are human powered submarines. I competed in the second ISR in Riviera Beach in '91 as a midshipman when I was the propulsor for the Naval Academy's boat dubbed Subdu. Later in my career, I was a safety diver for races at Carter Rock.

In the next couple weeks, I'm gonna interview many people involved in this year's race but, of course, I had to start with Jerry. So let me introduce him. Captain Jerry Rovener has a BS in administration and a BS in American history from the University of Wisconsin. He has a master's degree in human resource management from Pepperdine University. He served in the United States Navy as a deep sea diving and salvage officer.

Upon completion of his diving training in Washington DC, he reported to the USS Orlatan ASR 22 as the deep submergence officer where he was responsible for submarine rescue operations. This included recertifying the submarine rescue chamber to a depth of 850 feet in 1975. He is among a rare breed in that he is recompression chamber certified. Jerry commanded a US Navy expedition to conduct the underwater historical survey of the Panama Canal in 1994 as part of the canal turnover. He holds certification as a saturation deep sea diver, a surface warfare officer, and a special operations officer.

He completed thirty seven years of military service, which included both active and reserve time, retiring as a captain. And most important, he is married to Susan for the last fifty years. Jerry, thanks again for joining me. Let me start by asking when and how did you first get involved in ISR?

One of the, people that I'll be talking a little bit about who's been with me throughout this thing is a re retired navy captain also, David Peterson. He was at Nav C. He was my past CEO in the reserve unit, and we had yearly meetings to set up where we were gonna go on our two week active duty training. This particular one was seventeen days for the particular event. And he came out and said, who wants to conduct safety diving operations for the international submarine races?

And, of course, we I raised my hand thinking, submarine race. Come on.

This is a joke.

This is a joke. So I go back and tell my men. I said, guys, if I got a great thing, we're going to Florida. We're gonna be on the beach. We're gonna be supporting this thing called a submarine race.

Well, you know, I had explained to everybody exactly what it was. So we packed up all our gear, and we went down Riviera Beach in the in that summer of, '91. And lo and behold, we had to set up a quarter mile underwater course. And then and to survey that to get it, you know, properly done and to make sure it's not too far offshore because at that time, each human powered submarine had to have a delivery vehicle to get it out to to theirs. We set up a course.

We also set up on the course a 10 meter straightaway. So I had people at the front and people at the back. And if you didn't if the submarines didn't pass that, event, they were allowed to go on the quarter mile track. But prior to that, they had to pass it in a dry inspection to make sure they qualified for every everything that we wanted. And as the years have gone on, that's become a lot tighter and a lot more sophisticated.

There, we were using a lot of civilian judges, and we weren't really sure what we were looking at. We my main concern then was can I get a person out of the submarine? Because they're very tight quarters, as you know, being the engine of one and making sure you had enough, you know, air to breathe and making sure everything was marked right so we knew how to get people out. And other thing I was very interested in making sure that some of these blades on the propulsion systems are very sharp. We don't get anybody get hurt.

So that was one inspection, and then the the float that took them out or delivery vehicle took them out to the course was another one, then getting them down and then racing, and we usually use two at a time. And the way and we we got we requested, as I said, as a reserve unit. And we worked our little fannies off, and we found out that people that are volunteers come and go as they please, so we ended up doing the bulwark of everything, setting it up and running. And apparently, we did such a great job that I don't know if you remember the name Black Bart, but he was the head of diving back then. He requested me and my team from Philadelphia again to do the two thousand and I mean, the ninety three race.

And that was held in Fort Lauderdale. And at that particular race, we ballooned up to 50 boats. And we had to do a tremendous amount of work because it was so big, so complicated. We rebuilt a barge for the before the coast guard would let us use it as a diving platform. We had two open bells that we used for the starting line and the finish line.

Of course, it was set up. And to get 50 boats with weather and everything through inspections was very, very difficult. I did not know at that time that I you know, I they wanted them inspected in the water. Finally, what I did was I opened up a dock. We could drive them into a dock and do many at a get them cleaned up, figure out what was going on because it just wasn't gonna happen in a two week period of time.

So the first week, of that event was setting everything up. The second week was trying to get the races done. But with 50 boats, 50 different, you know, plans on each one, it was very, very difficult to make sure we had enough time and space to run this. I also had the coast guard on standby in case a boat went off the course. And one of the one of the hard parts of it, and and you as you will know, I mean, you you know being a diver, at one time, I had 72 people underwater and to keep track of everybody.

We were working. We started our work at 05:00 in the morning and we didn't get everything cleaned up till it was dark at night and then we were charging bottles which I had to get them certified for air because the the attorneys for the the navy wanted to make sure they were certified compressors. I brought the compressors from New Jersey. Actually, I they were given to us by a company that wanted to test them out, and we used those. And we would fill those bottles up in the evening for all the contestants.

So we we worked, just about around the clock. And it was great. And all my guys just, loved it. We we got to see the excitement of the young people and how they were so passionate about what they were doing. And that contagiousness of, you know, their thing was was great for us to see.

So we were there to support them. And that's what kinda carried us carried me on. This is my thirty fourth year. So if guess I got committed to it. If I can just keep going for a minute.

In '93, the races were gonna after the race was over '94, we were told the races were stopped. There was a problem with, the sponsor of the race, Pat Perry from Perry Oceanography. Somebody had, you know, lawsuit in from the ninety one race. It tripped over a wire on the beach, and he didn't wanna have the exposure. So I got a call from Nancy Hussey, who was the executive director of the enterprise at that time.

I drove down to Washington, and she wanted to know if I would take it over. And I was like, what are you talking about? Take this take what over? I mean, you know, run these sub races. I said, well, first off, it can't be done in the open ocean.

I think my OPTAR, we spent over half a million dollars. We're putting up the second race because I had another I asked for another reserve unit. So we had two reserve units there. I had not quite a hundred navy divers, or I should say, hundred navy personnel, probably about sixty, seventy divers for the second race. And, you know, seventeen days at the BMR Hotel in is expensive.

Food is expensive. Travel is expensive. So and the weather is something that would you couldn't predict. So, I mean, there were sometimes we had to close the station down because of thunder and lightning. So it was a it was a problem for that.

And then having that many that many contestants, along the beach was was amazing, but it was a lot to keep, you know, to keep keep track of. And like I said, we were the only ones that had the air to supply for the tanks and whatnot, and it was it was very, very difficult. So when we I sat down and talked to Nancy. I said, we can't I can't I can't support an an operation out in the open ocean anymore. So she had a connection, and we I made some phone calls, and we we had a an interview with, Carter Rock where we currently are at.

And they let us go between, Christmas and New Year's. So we actually had a three day event. And unbeknownst to me, we were being monitored and graded. Now I went back to my reserve unit and I asked, is anybody interested? And without exception, everybody volunteered.

So I took my reserve on their own time between, Christmas and New Year's in '95. And I called up Jim Corey, who I had met at the ninety three race. He was from the Secret Service, and he was in charge of the president's in water security. And I said, Jim, can would you come over and, you know, help us out? And as it ended up, he ended up being my diving supervisor, got sick.

Jim pitched in, and, you know, the rest is history. Jim and I were together forever, you know, after that. And we pulled the the race off. And what was interesting to me was after we were done the races, I had a, you know, a wash down with, the people that were in charge there, and they came and they said, we're amazed how you ran the diving station. It's just like the navy.

I said, it is the Navy. Everybody that's that you see here is Navy. We don't know any other way of doing it. And that's how we kinda got the go ahead to stay at Carteret. Although, we did have a problem, in '97, and, Jim and I ended up going to, Crystal City for to make our case why they should keep the races open and how we we made our case to, you know, a few captains, and they were sitting there and, you know, giving us you know, they didn't really understand what this is all about.

And we explained it to him about how many young people were were gonna be getting jobs in the military, how much we needed to instill in them the importance of what they're doing and the importance of a career, in design engineering. And what they found out was they can do things in the classroom. When they get into the actual participation of taking their ideas and putting them practical, they found they had problems and and different things that would would go wrong, and they were had to correct them on the fly and and learn how to do that, which is which is really instilling because we we could watch their little brains thinking and thinking and thinking, you know, of what we what we needed to do. So we were, you know, trying to make our case, and I I wish I could remember his name. A three star admiral came in.

And he, you know, he I he must have been listening, and he says, okay. So tell me why I should trust you two guys to do this. And I said I gave him my background, which you just just read. And I said, you know, and I finished up by saying, and, you know, I just the Panama Canal and all this and everything. And I was a saturate one of six saturation deep sea diving officers in the navy, etcetera, etcetera.

And then Jim gets up and goes, well, I'm secret service, and I'm in charge of the president's in water safety. And the three star looks at the other guys and goes, what is wrong with you people? Make this happen, and it's been that way ever since.

Contestants are typically college students studying naval architecture or marine engineering, maybe another engineering field, but it's open to everyone. Can you describe three or four examples of various contestants?

Yeah. We have great universities that have always come such as Virginia Tech. We have a great university up in Canada, Montreal. I E. Coli, they they superior.

We call them Omer. That's the name of their boat. We've got Michigan's always been there. Washington's been there every time, UCLA. So you get some you get some big names.

We get a lot from, Florida. So, you know, it's been it's been a really good group. We get now we we when I first started in this, as you remember, we had some companies that would sponsor a boat, but that really has tapered off over the last few years. We can we've we've been in we've been getting a lot more high schools. And one of the reasons we've we've gotten high schools in, a couple of navy guys like us have been teachers at the high schools, submariners, and they got their their people going in, and it's been it's been really great.

And we've also had a couple independents. We have one from CART Kids. They're actually from Washington DC area. It's a, you know, private group of homeschool, and they they do a great job. What's what's really special is the Navy gets to view future engineers for at at their place for over a week and see how they perform.

The high school kids get to see the college kids and determine what school they might wanna go to. And we've had a number of high school kids go to these colleges that they've met there just because they have a, you know, submarine, competition. So from from that standpoint, it's it's really nice, and we we really encourage that. And one of the things that we we encourage, and I'll get to this later, about awards, but we have a Steve Barton award. And I think you'll be talking to, their parents before.

He came in '93 and he was too young to raise his boat. There was a he had to be scuba qualified. He was too young. I've now changed that since I took it over. That was one of the changes that I made.

So younger people, as long as they ever qualified, you know, could be a part of this. They they get an award for the spirit of the races. So we encourage everybody there to view and go and help other people. Let's say we have we we know we have a great boat from this university and we know we have somebody that's not as strong. We'll tell them, maybe you wanna, you know, piggyback on it.

They may be gonna be a big brother to them. So we get a lot we get a lot of that, and that's something that you can't you can't buy. I mean, it's it's great. And they and they and they really learn these these young, young adults really learn the spirit of cooperation. They learn what they what their limits are, what the limits of, you know, their technology is, and they get to see you take their ideas and make it practical.

And that I mean, that's that's a whole whole thing. As everybody in your audience knows, that's a whole big that's a whole big deal.

When I participated in the second ISR, the Naval Academy was proud to be the defending champion of the first race. So he returned with that champion boat, Squid. And as I said earlier, I was the propulsor for the second boat, Subdu. Subdue had a unique paddle wheel propulsion design. Its power emerged just as a Mississippi Riverboat at the bottom of its rotation and in this case, the paddles would emerge from inside the submarine protruding downward and backward pushing the water As it ascended, the paddles returned back inside the boat, but they would also fold or flip to become more hydrodynamic reducing the drag.

We really thought that design was cool. I'm interested. What other unique designs have you seen over the years?

Well, we we've seen people try to do jet propulsion, sorta like you said, to get the water and suck it through. A lot of flappers, and they're kinda funny. We had one guy who was actually a retired Navy diver, and he came back a few times. And he built it was identical to the Jetsons, you know, craft that was flying. And he took you you know, we'll get some of these boats to go down in a couple minutes or or whatever.

He took almost a half an hour to get down the course, and, I mean, he was dead tired when he got out. But he made it, and everybody was there cheering, you know, and it was it was really good. I've seen fish. They might have made, like, a fish, you know, how it swims. I'm gonna tell you that the ones that usually are the the ones that work are the propellers.

Like, you know I mean, that's why we we don't have that many in our nuclear program. I don't think they have floppers or whatnot, but but the propeller driven ones work the greatest. But what's unique about a lot of that is I've seen over the years where based on their speed, the power will change with different angle, differentness, the fins will go a little different. So that's been, you know, a big thing. One of the one of the groups had them so triggered.

It was all done by computer. So as soon as they would, you know, get x x number of RPMs, it would do this. It would do that. So we've seen some really, you know, unique designs in that. And remember, as you know, they're they're human powered, so there's no engines in there.

Who are some of the memorable people who have participated in ISR over the years?

Okay. Let let me just let me just rattle off a few people that have been with me for the whole time. As I said, captain Dave Peterson, he's been there for he just missed one race. And and then, you know, when he retired, I I said, hey, Dave. You're working for me now.

You're gonna get me involved in this. And he's been there throughout the whole thing. Jim Corey, you know, secret service. And and I'll get what one of the things that he did. Dan Dozier.

Now here's here's one of the things that's really interesting. Everybody that's been for the last fifteen years, maybe even longer, that I deal with. When I first started dealing with people at, at Carderock, I had to go through long winded explanations of what we did, how it worked, and whatnot. For the last fifteen years, everybody that works there has been a racer. Everyone.

And Dan Dozier was at the first two, and then he became he ended up being the head civilian there. So we didn't have a problem. Plus the fact when I got a captain like Charles Burrow, and he was the CEO when he first came there. And then he was the CEO the second time. He would add add a gap.

We we were very lucky to have him twice. Well, he ended up being the chairman of our board. So, you know, I sucked him in to to do this. We had Heidi Stefanis with Piper. I don't know if you know who she is, but she was a diver.

She was an astronaut. She was part of this. It's it's Pam Corey, Jim's wife. She's the treasurer now. She's been that way.

My wife has been the contestant liaison, Susan, since I don't even know how many how many races. So they call her mama bear because she's you know, she gets them from all over the world, and and, you know, we we, you know, get a good rapport with everybody, and she knows all the people. And and, actually, she starts the conversation back in August of the the previous year to say, who's doing it? What's going on? Etcetera.

So that is good. The best, the best event, I think, I mean, the the most interesting people, we had a 91 91 '90 '90 '3. We had Kathleen Sullivan who just came back from space, and she was, on this on this shuttle. And she was the guest speaker. You know, I took her out, and she dove to see how the subs were and everything like that, and she was the guest speaker.

Well, this girl came up, Megan McArthur, and she wanted to meet her. And I had a hundred peep hundred guys, so I I said to Jim, can you take care of this? And and they become lifelong friends. And Jim introduced her to Kathleen Sullivan. Now they had a twenty minute conversation.

Well, Kathleen then dedicated I mean, Megan then dedicated her life to aerospace. When she she became an astronaut, and in 02/2011, she and Kathleen both came back to the races. It was the first time they'd seen each other since, the '93 race. We ended up one spoke and the other one spoke. I think we had 400 kids there, and you could have heard a pin drop.

And we we we awarded them with bookends. And it was it was an amazing moment for, you know, that that happened. And the last and during COVID, we did a virtual race, and Megan did a whole briefing for us, a whole introduction from outer space, which was pretty cool. So, I mean, you just don't get that. And that and that's that's one of the things.

I know this is a small event, and I'm hoping that we'll people to come out and see us this summer. You know, it's the third weekend our third weekend in June because just to see these young adults. And and I'm gonna say that, conservatively, over my thirty four years, I'll bet you 3,000 kids have gone into the, defense industry, some at Carderock, some in the military, some of the others. It's it's a great it's a great thing for, people to take a look at. And and you get at least I do, I get caught up with the energy and the and I and I tried to make it as comfortable for them as possible.

And we we put down very strict rules. I mean, don't you know. I mean, there's no fooling around. You know? Well, everything is business and they understand that.

We have a briefing night before we go through all the rule all the rules. We even go through what the military currencies are, etcetera. So, you know, that's that's something that we're very, very proud of. So and when we've had get we've had as as we had discussed in the past, we've had different TV stations there. We were on Good Morning America.

We were you know, we've had Alan All have come there twice, you know, once out in the open ocean, once inside. So we've we've had a a lot of coverage. It's been it's been good. And we get a lot of guests that, you know, come through there.

I remember, both times that Alan Alda came, I was there. He was there the second ISR when, I was the, the propulsor, and it was Scientific American then. He was like the narrator person for that.

Yes.

And then when I was a safety diver at Carter Rock, he came one time during that. I'm interested. I think you've sent me the link to Megan's address from space to the ISR. If I can find that, I'll put that at the tail end of the podcast for everyone to

You know, it's funny. I just showed that to a young man today. That's Yeah. I just I just watched it. It was very good.

You talked about how the race moved from Riviera Beach to Carter Rock. And, again, I remember that. I remember the conditions in Riviera Beach. We had to end the race early because of the conditions there. It's tough.

It's the open ocean. The ocean does what it wants. So then you moved to Carter Rock. I'm curious. Over the years, you've made several improvements to the course at Carter Rock.

Could you describe how that has evolved?

Oh, yeah. I had to come up with a race course. So with my guys and a few other I I gave a talk to you'll love this. I gave a speech to the Princeton Scuba Club in Princeton, New Jersey. And from that, I got three guys that wanted to, you know, work, Peter Hanway, Dave McGee, and, what was, Murray's Maurice Koots.

Now Murray Koots was a old, old time diver, and, he I think he even knew Jacques Cousteau. And I got a guy that worked at Frank Lang who worked at RCA. And we set up in a warehouse with a bicycle to figure out how we could do timing. And we worked something out, and Frank was able to borrow the equipment for that. And we set up a course underwater, and that was difficult with stanchions, and that we didn't know what we were really doing.

And we had to make the course so people could see it and go down. So we wanted to lay out a hundred meter course with a speed trap in the middle so they could, you know, optimum speed if if if that was the case. And then when at the end, they would stop pedaling and, as you know, baby divers would get them. So we started out with chem lights. And every once in a while, we had a you know, we had stopped the race, but it go down and put the chem lights down, and and it was dirty.

The tank was not a clean tank. And as we we moved forward and our relationship got better with Carteret and the people from the races started working there, we got volunteers to help clean the tank. And then they thought that was a good idea that they do that because they were doing some other tests that they hadn't been able to do before with the tank. So in fact, we're we're gonna start cleaning it now in the next couple weeks and, you know, to get that. So now we went from ChemLights to I met this company in Trenton, New Jersey that did strobe lights.

And we got them but the problem with the strobe lights were every few hours, we had to do a battery change. But he keep doing that, and that went for a couple of times. And then it was just hard to get the course laid out. So I met a company in Philadelphia who wanted to do some work for the Navy, and I introduced them. And as a as for getting permission from from Quarter Rock and as an introduction from them, I was able to get them to shoot a hundred my my course, the 10 meter course, and put little and Pixie, little stubs like this on either side.

So now I have a perfect course every time, and it would qualify for Guinness Book of World Records. So they're still there. It's amazing. I mean, they've been there since the, you know, nineties. You know?

Mean, it's just it's just perfect. So we you know, the course now then we started. I got some underwater guys that were underwater riggers. They've taken that to set up the course in no time, and we've gone to rope lights. And the rope lights were great because we have a a lead up line going to the first gate where I have I have cameras that are at each gate.

Now we switch to went from analog to digital. I don't know exactly how the the digital timing works. You know, it's been been put in, and we're gonna even do it better this time. Just a little bit, you know, more classy. But we have we have fixed cameras.

And those cameras, when the when the submarine would pass, and we make sure that the submarine has a color scheme so it's very bright so we can, you know, know exactly when it goes through. If the water gets, you know, cloudy, it's a reflective tape. We have lights there, And we time it there at the very beginning, and there's white lights on the on the bottom, and there's lights to go up the the the poles on the on either side. The course is set off a little bit to the right so that we can retrieve the submarines going back. Remember, the tank is, 52 feet wide, 22 feet deep, and not quite a three quarters of a mile indoors, but we only use maybe 200 some meters.

That's it. The force is actually a 10 meters. And then in the we have two red we have two green things in the middle that will tell where they where where the speed trap is so people can see that. And at the end, it's red. So they know when they see the red, they cross the finish line.

They stop, you know, pedaling so that the navy guys can get them out of the water. So with the with the rope lights, once that happened, it it made our made our job a lot easier.

Building a submarine and completing the course is an accomplishment in itself. Speed is clearly a goal. But, Jerry, what are the other elements and prizes associated with the competition?

We want people to be judged on the total package of engineering. We have our one of the things that I wanted to make sure since I was running it, I was never involved in the judging. So we have a separate separate group of of, you know, people that do the judging, and then they're they're outside of the people that run it. Right? Although we do have wet judges that are, you know, part of it, make sure that everything's working in there.

I wanted to say that because I don't want anybody to be, you know, prejudiced. And so, you know, it was always one of my key things. We look for intelligence and innovation. What is what is the big thing that, you came out of it? Not not that it may work or not work, but what were they thinking of, and what why did they think about it, and why did they build it?

As you said, we look for the absolute speed award, who's the fastest, and everybody, you know, that's the that's the big thing. Who's who's the best person? We look at the best use of composites. I remember one of the pilots that cracked me up was they were able to get bulletproof cord somehow, and they wrapped their entire submarine in, bulletproof cord. It was so heavy.

It was, I mean, you weren't gonna kill anybody in there every time, but it was very heavy. It was it was unique. We we we look at the best design. The judges look at what is the the best design. We look at we call it the smooth operator award.

Who has the ability to come in and out of the water the best? Who doesn't? It gets their pipe the people in the water. They're ready to race. They get down.

They come in. They come out. So that's, that's interesting. We when we talk about speed, we also do it by category. So we we know we have a number of different, categories.

We have one person submarine, propelled, one person submarine non propelled. You know, we put that as a category. And two, same thing. Two people propelled, not propelled. So we, you know, we look at that too.

And then we we give out two awards for overall performance. Who who had the best design? Who was the people had the easiest way of getting in and out of the water? Who did who did things the best? And then we have the spirit of the races award, which I alluded to later, who helped the most people.

And and that's voted on by the contestants. So they they vote on that. Who was you know, which team, you know, was the best to everybody there. So, you know, we we I think we cover, you know, kinda everything. We don't wanna leave we don't wanna leave anybody out.

And I think the when we look at innovation, they can take a number of turns, and it may not be something at this particular time that was was gonna work. Maybe with another iteration of it, it'll be really great.

Do you have some memorable moments, from ISR over the years?

A lot. I think I think I will say that the guys in my diving unit, even them, kudos, If it wasn't for them, there'd be no race. When I asked for volunteers, there was nobody. I mean, where was I gonna go? And for the first two, three races, they did that.

My son, you I don't know if you remember, and my brother would come down and help out, and they pull the submarines back, you know, in the the rope. I you talk to me, you got hooked in. You know? There are so many people that I have to, you know, have to thank. Now I I've I've even got my grandkids in.

So when you say how many you know, but it's just so many people that stepped up and and do things. Justin Chase, and he's he's on the board now. His father, Chip, he was, my reserve he was in reserves. He was the reserve CEO of experimental diving unit. So we had him.

You know, what what it's it's not that it was anybody in particular. It was that group. I mean, that guy, Maurice Coots, he was he was from England, Scotland. He was just a complete nut. And but, you know, he he came down here to help.

Frank Lang oh, a little quick story about Frank. Frank no one's allowed to talk to Frank because he's our timer. And he got all this equipment, and as circumstance would have it, ended up being on the board of directors of a autistic school in Princeton, New Jersey. And sitting next to me is the is the president of RCA, where this guy worked. So I go over there.

He buys buys me for lunch. So I go over there, and, I haven't we're having lunch in his office. And I talked to him about Frank and tell him about sub races and all that. And he says, oh, let me get Frank up here. Well, Frank had never met the president.

Frank had been there, like, twenty, thirty years sorta. And Frank gets called, he comes in the office. He sees me sitting there. He's going, what is going on here? And I said, Frank, I was just telling, you know, whatever his name was, what we're doing with the subways, how you've been so great with the equipment you get from here you borrow.

And he goes he looks at me like, they don't know. I'm borrowing the equipment, Jerry. And, you know, I said, Frank's you know, we use it a lot. And the guy goes, Frank, what kind of equipment is it? And Frank starts to tell him, and he looks at me and goes, do you really you need it?

I said, yeah. We need it. He says, Frank, take it all for you. Bring it down to the races. So he gave us everything.

So, you know, you meet a lot of, different people. The CEOs at the base, you know, there's a lot of times you have to get them. You guys, they come now. We get the experimental diving unit. They come up because one of our board members works down there at Bill Maher.

So, it's really you know, it's impressive. There's so many people. You know? And and a lot of people, you know, I mean, we've we've done it for thirty four years, so I'm the guy that knows everything. I've got two huge boxes here.

Was supposed to write up a history, and I haven't haven't touched it in two years yet. You know? So I'll probably I'll probably get to it soon.

I will now add my own story then, because I do know Chip Chase. And, Chip and I were both safety divers one year, and he somehow talked to the Michigan team and convinced them to let us run their boat. And so the last race of and I think

it was remember.

02/2001. So he said to me, Steve, you've done the propulsion thing. I'm gonna get up front and steer. So you'd be the propulsor. And I said, okay.

Well, the challenge was when we got in the boat, they had long hookahs to the scuba, and the Michigan students did not clamp down the hookah to the side of the boat. It had a thing to fasten it so that it was like a strain relief. So, I don't, they forgot to do it. I don't know this. We're partway down the course and all of a sudden, my regulator pops out of my mouth and it was because the because it was not secured, the regulator got wrapped up in the bike motion and so as I'm pedaling, I'm I I hooked it and I ended up pulling the wrapping it around, pulled the regulator right out of my mouth.

So, of course, we had the seed bottles. So, I stopped pedaling so we stopped moving and we're coasting and I I I reached forward and I grabbed Chip Lake on the leg or grabbed him or something and he kinda looked back and and so I went to my seed bottle and we both got out of the boat and ascended and that was that and I tell you what, I think the gearbox was ruined on that Michigan boat after that because of everything that happened. So But

I remember that. I remember that now.

Haven't been haven't been through pool week a couple times. It was an easy day. Right? These things happen. So It

was an easy day. I Yeah. You know, I remember Chip tried to catch one, and, he nearly broke a rib.

Well, Jerry, let's talk about the, current race and the future. For prospective contestants, can you describe the process from showing up and then checking in and doing the whole race?

Right. You know, I think it's better to start with probably starts two years in advance. You know? They have to decide what they wanna do. There's nothing most of the schools do not, know what what's going on.

In fact, I was at a college years ago, and they had a submarine there, and nobody knew what it was. You know? I said, oh my god. Just I remember that. And they go, what?

You know? You know? And I talked to some of these kids, and I say, I've been doing it for thirty four years now. So we had people that, you know, married, have many kids, and kids are in college and all that kind of stuff. I think what they need to do when they when what I tried to instill upon them, this is an opportunity of a lifetime.

You are never gonna be able to build something and test it in a facility such as this that the United States Navy has, and it should be treated as a privilege, an honor and a privilege to to be here. And I say it's up to you to be ready to go. Now some years, some students, they're not ready. Other years, everybody's ready. I can tell if you're talking to them at our first meeting, what what I'm what I'm gonna get.

Susan tries to explain to them, you know, when she does her contestant liaison, please be ready to do this. And then we run into problems. Like, they can't get their boat here. The the customs didn't do this, or if it's coming from overseas, or it was, you know, too expensive to get this. They tried another way.

One of the big problems we have is they don't train their divers, enough, and we're very, very strict on qualifications and medical qualifications. We don't wanna put, you know, anybody in harm's way at all because that's the first thing that'll happen. Somebody will get hurt. We'll never be allowed to go back there. We tell them, get them trained.

And if they're not trained, we've gotta take the time, and it takes time from everybody else to make sure they can complete a safety checkout that. So we're very, very serious about that. We have to make sure that and what they should be doing when they when they get there, everything should be ready to go. Their safety checks, their their their their systems, their engineering should be ready. We see some teams that are trying to build it while they're here.

I mean, this is you know, and it happens every every race. And we have other teams that come there and go and go, we're ready to go. And we can only do it for a week now because the tank is very, very expensive to to run. And we do it during one what navy shutdown period basically there. As long as they're they're ready and willing to go, you know, we don't have a problem.

Sometimes their their theories don't work, and that'll that'll be a problem, you know, internally for them to figure out. But the the best thing that we do, and we try to explain to them early, is be ready to go. You have five days. You're not gonna get an extra minute when this thing says shut down. This is the military.

It shuts down. We're done. So instilling in them the urgency and the opportunity that they have that they'll never ever have again to use a facility like this to test out their theories. So be ready to go. I think that's the the biggest thing.

What can we expect to see this year in ISR twenty twenty five?

We're looking at, 20 votes, which which is good. We've we've got some entries from countries we haven't had in the past. I think it's the second time Poland's been there. Taiwan, Singapore. We haven't heard from Taiwan, so I'm not a % sure.

We've got Manchester coming again. We've got Omer coming. We've got Washington State. We've got a good group of people. A lot of have pedigrees.

You know, we don't have any we don't have any big surprises right now. Some countries have, you know, stopped the program over the years because it takes somebody to to be, you know, be the person that pushes. It's not something that, you know, is it's not like a football team that they're gonna that they're gonna be here. So we're we're expecting a good international field this year, and it'll be interesting to see, you know, how that how that plays out.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with the talk a little, learn a lot audience?

Yeah. I'd love to have them come and see the races. Twenty third starts in June for the whole week. Know, I would if I was a a spectator, I would say, as you would say, Wednesday is probably the best day only because Wednesday, Thursday, because takes 20 boats to get everybody in, checked in. You know, like I said, we're talking dry checkouts.

And some and and we'll get there Sunday, and people will be ready to get their dry checkouts, and they'll be ready to go, you know, get and that's what we like. Because if you're ready to go, you know, Monday, you can be in the water and race. We'll be set up and then it's it's up to you to use the course, but, you know, we gotta get long as everybody passes all the inspections. And and what we also do, just as you remember, we take all the the safety divers, and we go to each boat to make sure they understand where their regress is egress and where the sharp points are, because some of them are are sharp. And we we we talk to them about dulling some of these blades down because you can really get cut bad.

But we wanna make sure they know where to go. Everything's highlighted in you know, with international orange and spray paint, and then they have a we also have a light on the top so everybody can see exactly where it's at in case it gets cloudy. And the boat the the safety divers follow these boats as they go along, and and they have a a emergency buoy. It's a dead man switch. Something happens.

They let their hand go. Or if it goes by accident, it doesn't matter. That buoy hits the surface. The divers go in and and get the people out. They're not allowed to come out by themselves.

They have to be escorted up by a diver, so we don't want any embolism problems. But I think this year is gonna be, it'll be good. It's like it's like, every other year, things will get get moving. I'm looking forward to seeing the, the young adults that are that are there, you know, looking for it. I also love to see one of things I like to do is walk around and see who's helping each other.

You know? To me, that camaraderie about. Yeah. Yeah. Camaraderie is very, very good.

And I and I also like to see the high school kids mixing with the college students. And like I said, we've had many that have gone to those colleges just because of this. So, I mean, for me, that's river it's very rewarding. And and and talking to you, I mean, this has been great. I mean, if you hadn't been a student going through this, you know, we would never met.

I mean, because it's I mean, it's a it's a niche.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so thank you, Jerry, for taking this time to discuss the International Submarine Races twenty twenty five. I hope that we can welcome you again to talk a little, learn a lot, the podcast of the American Society of Naval Engineers.

Thank you very much.

Hello, ISR fans, and welcome to the International Space Station. I'm NASA astronaut and former ISR sub pilot, Megan McArthur. I'm so glad to know that students are still innovating and competing in the international submarine races. I'm sorry that it's not possible for you to be in the water at Carter Rock this year, but this is still a unique opportunity to learn and grow. It is absolutely true that my participation changed my life.

I was studying aerospace engineering at UCLA hoping to one day work for NASA, maybe even become an astronaut, though I was a bit hazy on the details. One day in senior year, I sat down in class next to my friend Derek. He was a fellow aerospace engineering student, and he said, Megan, we're going to build a submarine. And somehow, that became the thing that we did for the next six months in all of our spare time and even some of our not so spare time. We were a small team, so of course everyone got conscripted into multiple roles.

I was the smallest person on the team, so I was assigned the pilot role in our two person sub as the only one who could fit into the space left over after we built the sub around our powerhouse bicycler. So I need to become scuba certified. As someone who was not a strong swimmer and a little bit afraid of the ocean, this was something of a challenge. But meeting that challenge helped me grow stronger, and I fell in love with the ocean along the way. So when I went to the sub races, I was winding down my undergraduate studies and trying to figure out what to do next.

I really wanted to be involved with space exploration, but now I was dreaming about ocean exploration too. As Jim mentioned, he arranged for me to meet Kathy Sullivan during the end of races barbecue. So I asked her, what should I do if I want to be an astronaut? Keep pursuing aerospace or take a left turn into ocean exploration? At this point in my life, I've been asked that same question by dozens of aspiring young astronauts, and I give them the same answer that Kathy gave to me on that beach.

You need to figure out what it is that you love doing, and then work really hard to be good as you can be at doing that thing. She said, don't try to guess what NASA would want and pursue something for just that reason. If you don't love what you're doing, you're never going to be that good at it. And if you're not good at it, you're not going to get selected by NASA. Getting selected to be an astronaut is a real long shot.

But if you choose to pursue something you love and you never get selected, you still get to go to work every day and do something you love. It was great advice. Thank you, Kathy, and thank you, Jim, and all the people who encouraged me along the way. It turns out that when you get right down to it, what I love is working with a team that is tackling interesting, challenging problems. That's essentially what engineering is, no matter what type you choose.

Through this project, you're getting a strong foundation in teamwork and finding innovative solutions to challenges. This will serve you well no matter which realm you choose to explore. So find that passion. It might take a while or you might change your mind at some point, and that's okay. As long as you keep learning, keep challenging yourself, keep trying new things, you're on a good path.

And don't forget to share your dreams with the people around you. You'll meet people like Jim and Kathy who want to help you and encourage you on your journey. Best of luck to you. And maybe I'll see you at the races one of these years.