Triton Submarines -- The Submersible Anyone Can Pilot

If you ask Triton Submarine's General Manager Troy Engen what is his favorite discovery in a Triton Submarine, his first answer is a huge smile. That's followed by praise of what has to be the world's finest manned submersible -- one that anyone can pilot.

The Great American Senior Show was given unrestricted access to the Triton Submarine "skunkworks" a name derived from the Top Secret area where some of the world's most recognizable spy and high performance aircraft were conceived. Except this skunkworks houses some of the most high performing deep diving machines in the world.

In this special episode, Sam Yates, your grey-haired host of the Great American Senior Show talks with Triton's General Manager about some of the company's most popular submarines.

Transcript

Sam Yates: 0:11

Hello, everyone and welcome to another exciting edition of The Great American Senior Show. I'm your grey haired host, Sam Yates and today we're in Fellsmere, Florida. It is the world headquarters for Triton Submarines. And I've got the very very unique pleasure of being inside the Triton Submarines Skunk Works. This is where the various models are conceived and ultimately put together here on the floor of Triton submarines. I have as my special guest right now to give us a verbal tour. General Manager, Troy Engen.

Troy Engen: 0:49

Okay, so what we're looking at here in front of us today is what we call a 30 303. All of our subs are designated by the number of feet, they'll dive to within the amount of passengers that carry. So these dive to 3300 feet carry a pilot and two passengers. This is what we like to call the bread and butter of our team. This happens to be hole number six and hole number seven of this model, we're currently under under construction of hole number 10. So we've built 10 of these by the end of this year. And once again, they're they're fun vehicles, they dive to 1000 meters or 1000 meters or 3300 feet. air conditioned comfort stereo, up close and in person. It's amazing the things you get to see out of this, the acrylic sphere is about six inches thick, but just absolutely just disappears. Once you're in the water. It's just like you're you're right, you're right there with the fish. It's an amazing piece of equipment can stay down for as much as eight to 10 hours.

Sam Yates: 1:48

Wow. And then you don't have to worry about decompression. Oh

Troy Engen: 1:52

decompression rats are your one atmosphere the entire dive right, exactly. So anybody can do it. Wow.

Sam Yates: 1:57

How long does it take to build? One?

Troy Engen: 2:01

Okay, good. So there is some long lead items, the piece of acrylic is by far probably the longest. And that in one of these vehicles will take about from the time he ordered eight months, we'll take delivery of it. Honestly, at that point in time, all the rest of the parts are put together at that at that point. So it will take us probably about three months to actually do the assembly of the submarine. So but delivery times right now are between 10 and 12 months.

Sam Yates: 2:26

And you do export all over the world. You also our vehicles are

Troy Engen: 2:30

out there. They're on European boats they're on. Yeah, they're all over the world. We have a large, large vehicle just delivered to Vietnam. And we have a few here in the Bahamas in South America.

Sam Yates: 2:42

Now, the Barcelona operation projects you into Europe and other parts of the world quite handily.

Troy Engen: 2:51

It does. So it's the European marketplaces of what it is absolutely. It makes us it's a service facility for us as well. And there's other things our acrylics manufacture happens to be in Europe as well. And so sometimes it's easier to us for to us to do our assemblies. We assembled the vehicle that went to Vietnam was did the final assembly in Vietnam, in In Barcelona there. How do you

Sam Yates: 3:13

get the vehicle from here in Florida or wherever the I would presume all of them final assembly are here in Florida? How do you get them to their destination? So

Troy Engen: 3:21

they are transportable by a shipping container ship? Okay, they're a little bit over what we call out of gauge oversized cargo. But no, we ship them all over the world? Absolutely.

Sam Yates: 3:31

You have piloted the craft? Absolutely. Describe it.

Troy Engen: 3:37

Yeah. So generally I do the majority of the test drives any new vehicle that goes out of here. Right, exactly. And once again, it says Patrick was saying a few minutes ago, you know, we sit behind computers all day. But you know, even even those of us that have been doing this for up to as much as 40 years, we still thoroughly enjoy getting you behind the pilot's seat of one of these. Yes, it's an amazing thing. You know, I can honestly say that virtually every dive that you'll do, you'll see something you've never seen before. And it might be something that nobody's ever seen before. Very interesting.

Sam Yates: 4:07

ease of operation. Absolutely. Yeah.

Troy Engen: 4:10

It's the piloting the sub is anybody can do it. Anybody that plays a video game or anything like that, it's nothing, not a lot different than an aircraft is knowing what to do if something goes wrong. Generally, like I said, we have a couple of different philosophies here at Triton, Patrick, myself and the rest of the team, we've all been out in the field, and we do all the maintenance. Generally, the pilots will do the majority of the service work on the subs. And so we like to build these vehicles, a little bit different than an aircraft we'd like to make them very simple to work on. And therefore the maintenance if it's easy to be done, the maintenance will get done on the vehicle. And so like I said, generally the pilots are able to do the majority of the maintenance themselves. They are not a lot different than an aircraft. They go through an annual inspection every year by a certification body, whether it be a American Bureau of Shipping or DNB. A lot of different agencies but they will come in and do it inspections and they do a dive in the submarine as well annually.

Sam Yates: 5:03

Now, Patrick mentioned before I walked out here with you that you guys actually do the training and the certification for the the pilots.

Troy Engen: 5:12

That's right. So each of the vehicles as it's in the final stage of assembly, we invite the one of the clients representatives who's going to be in charge of the submarine wins on board the ship or so forth. They come in and learn, learn about the final assembly of the vehicle. And at that point, it's an easy way to start teaching them about the maintenance and so forth. Once I said the, the vehicle itself is generally very easy to drive, but so we get them involved. And then we go into final assembly, we go into what we call shop trials, then we go to harbor trials, then we go to sea trials, they go with us on that, and that's where they start getting their pilot training, then we take a go along with the sub to the ship of it's where it's going to be home, its home is going to be and we help them with your integration, install their battery chargers, all the auxiliary equipment that go along with the sub, as well as teach them and help them with their launch and recovery and things like that and continue the pilot training.

Sam Yates: 6:07

I have to ask because I asked Patrick, what is perhaps the most surprising or unique thing that you have seen or discovered on a dive.

Troy Engen: 6:17

I've gotten to dive on a lot of a lot of interesting places that my favorite place to dive in the world is Papa New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands right in that area called the Coral Triangle probably some of the most beautiful water in the world. We can dive on shipwrecks in Iron Bottom sound to the the coral reefs of Papa New Guinea but just amazing the amount of marine life and so forth that is still abundant in that area.

Sam Yates: 6:43

And a special thanks to the entire Triton submarine team for inviting this gray haired host of The Great American seniors show into their shop today. I'm Sam Yates and that's the way the program ends.