To hear Carsten Standfuss tell it, a two-day cruise on his boat is like any other weekend excursion. "Three to four people can go, walk around, sleep, eat, drink, and dive for wrecks," he says. Sounds relaxing - until you realize he plans to plunge his guests into the Atlantic Ocean in a 57-ton submarine he built from scratch.
Standfuss, 40, is building Euronaut, the world’s largest amateur sub, a project he started in 2000 and aims to finish this summer. The 53-foot vessel has a range of 600 miles and can descend more than 1,000 feet. It’s propelled by a 190-horsepower diesel engine for surface sailing and an electric motor with 6.5 tons of lead-acid batteries for traveling underwater. Three drop weights under the keel can be released, forcing the sub to surface instantly in case of an emergency (say, a giant squid attack).
When asked how much the Euronaut has cost him so far, Standfuss would say only that he’s refinanced his house in Berne, Germany, to pay for materials. Of course, the guy knows his way around a submarine: He built the world’s smallest personal sub at age 22, a 9.8-footer that set a Guinness world record in 1989 (it has since been broken). Standfuss subsequently became a serious wreck diver, but the North Sea is often too difficult to navigate with a surface ship. "The weather is bad, the currents are fast, and there’s a lot of traffic." The Euronaut features a pressurized chamber for divers entering and exiting the vessel, and for eating and sleeping while they decompress. It makes riding around in an oversize tin can seem almost … safe.
- Bob Parks
credit Henning Bock
credit Henning Bock
The bridge of Standfuss’ home-built sub.
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