A private sub for Captain Nemos – and four more aquatic gadgets

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Poetry in ocean

Twenty years ago, Dutch entrepreneur Bert Houtman decided that he wanted to kit out his yacht with a submarine. Fulfilling this wish would seem relatively straightforward for someone with sufficient funds, but he discovered that subs were verging on impossible to buy. Most people would abandon their Cousteau-inspired dream at this point, but Houtman chose the more ambitious route: he founded a company, U-Boat Worx, and began to design, build and sell submersibles. 

Its first models were built for the cruise industry and superyachts over 80m long, but the Nemo was designed as a more compact craft for smaller yachts (over 30m) with the ability to dive to 100m: ie, a similar depth to technical divers. It’s remarkable in a number of ways, but two stand out: it’s the only production line-built sub in the world (all others are built to order) and at 2,500kg it’s the lightest two-seater manned submersible ever built for this depth. 

It’s the lightest two-seater manned submersible ever built for this depth

A disadvantage of starting a submersible firm in the Netherlands is that the seas are shallow, visibility is poor and currents are strong. So U-Boat Worx opened its Sub Center in Curaçao, partly to get its craft certified and partly to train new owners; a Nemo purchase comes with a 14-day course in Willemstad, or another location of your choice. “The Nemo is very intuitive,” says U-Boat Worx’s Roy Heijdra. “It’s been made as easy as possible to operate, and after around 20 dives you’re ready to go. The majority of the training is about safety.” 

Unfortunately I didn’t get to explore the reefs of Curaçao in a Nemo, but it’s clear from footage taken from its controls that diving while comfortably seated and listening to music is an experience bordering on the magical. “Our mission has always been to make the underwater world more accessible, and mass production means that subs are at a much lower price point than they used to be,” says Heijdra. “Still nowhere near that of a car, but you have to start somewhere!” 

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Electric switch

Range anxiety and a lack of charging infrastructure has slowed the adoption of electric power in the boating world. French firm BlueNav is encouraging a soft transition with these add-on electric motors, creating a hybridised boat that can switch between a combustion engine and electric. They come into their own in conjunction with the software installed on the boat’s multi-function display, with lateral docking, cruise control and a virtual anchor. Harbour manoeuvres, fishing, cruising and even whale watching are suited to electric power, with the combustion option always on hand to give you more speed and range. The 15kW version is for boats around 15m, the 8kW for up to 12m.

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All clear?

Swimmers or surfers wanting a water quality assessment at British beaches generally depend on information provided by the Environment Agency, but that can take between 24 and 48 hours to be published. An industrial alternative called Bacterisk is used by water companies and regulators, and Bactiquick is the consumer version, providing a fast and comprehensive handheld test for health-threatening bacteria. The test itself is a simple two-stage process: dilute your seawater sample in one test tube before transferring to another containing a reagent, which you pop into the device. After 15 minutes it’ll give a colour-coded assessment (green, orange, red) with more information available in an app.

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Watch me

A highly capable dive computer doubling as a multi-sport watch and health tracker, the G2 is surprisingly trim and eminently wearable – 45.5mm across and weighing just 65g. Some of the health metrics it measures (including stress levels, HRV and quality of sleep) feed into an assessment of your readiness for diving; once you’re under way, it can display dive data for seven modes – single or multi-gas, apnoea, etc – though it doesn’t include air integration. It does, however, have an excellent three-axis compass, GPS to help keep track of entry and exit locations and Garmin LiveTrack (so friends can keep track of you). The range of features is initially overwhelming, but it quickly becomes a very valuable pal.

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The perfect foil

With a much smaller wetted surface area than the hull of a traditional boat, hydrofoils are perfect candidates for electric power as long as they’re sufficiently light. Foilone has achieved this using a carbon-fibre composite, creating a slender, single-track boat with two batteries; you’ll get a full day of driving on one charge, or a couple of hours if you’re fully foiling. Its split handlebar steering system is like riding a bike – not just figuratively, but literally: precisely the same physics that keep a bike stable keep this craft perfectly balanced. At around 10 knots (11.5mph) it automatically rises out of the water, and suddenly you’re flying. It was crowned production motor boat of the year at the Foiling Awards in Genoa.

@rhodri