Take-off to fly under? Old is young?

Strap into the five-point racing-car harness. Go through the pre-flight. Check the flaps and rudders. Test the throttle. Adjust the oxygen in your cockpit and prepare to fly – into the wild blue under!

Take off to go down? It’s one of John Jo Lewis’s favorite parts of “flying underwater” in the Super Aviator, a 22-foot winged submersible. As the Managing Director for Sub Aviators Systems, he created their motto: “INVESTIGATIO PER VOLATUM SUB UNDIS” which he translates to "Discovery through flight beneath the waves."

To encourage discovery, Lewis and Senior Pilot Fred McLaren invited distinguished scientists and explorers (and some journalists) to Lake Tahoe for test flights, and signed up pioneering students who wanted to be part of an Underwater Flight School. SAS has a unique vehicle and is looking for people now with the vision to put it to good use ­– from surveying underwater archeological ruins to finding and filming new species.

Up in the crispy, forested air of 5,000 feet, I watched the two-domed craft slide back into the water from a boat trailer and turn around pointing through the lapis blue lake to snow capped mountains. After a surface communications check-in with the support team, the Aviator, with her 12-foot wings, glides down, and two faces in separate domed cockpits slip below the water line for another flight. We watched in the clear waters until the Aviator was too deep for us to see.

Not unlike the early days of aviation in the sky, there are inherent risks in tapping the boundaries of the unknown. The sub needs to be adjusted for fresh water instead of salt, and for the higher altitude. Both machine and humans are going through the paces.

When I was fortunate to be the first women to “fly underwater” in a winged submersible, my feet on the pedals, joystick between my legs, and my head looking up and 360 degrees around, it was in the warm tropical waters of the Bahamas. I submerged with inventor Graham Hawkes along the Tongue of the Sea. We banked around shipwrecks and surprised a shark.

Here, the colder waters are emptier. The focus is on the actual flying, learning the controls in currents, and trusting the instruments. McLaren, who commanded subs that charted under the Arctic ice, takes Explorers Club President Emeritus Dan Bennett for a three-hour flying lesson. Then Lewis takes Boyd Matson, renowned explorer for National Geographic and Wild Chronicles. Above the surface, waiting their turn, are Don Walsh, who has been as deep as any human when he descended into the Marianas Trench, and Anne Doubilet, a remarkable photographer who has spent much of her life underwater.

If I were to take out a map and color in all the waters and lands these veterans have explored on expeditions, it would be an exciting testament to humanity’s curiosity, but I am guessing it would be the vast places still not visited that would most intrigue this bunch. These over-50 explorers want to get into the hill and up onto the hill, not “over the hill.”

Septuagenarian Walsh says he has been in perhaps 40 different subs, and piloted 20 of them, but was happy to sample the Aviator, which is “an entirely different concept.” This one operates on the principles of flight with thrust and drag, unlike most subs that perform more like hot air balloons. Back home, Walsh climbs into the cockpit of his homemade airplane. McLaren, also a septuagenarian is busy thinking about the global expeditions he wants to go on while piloting the Aviator.

The world doesn’t seem to shrink as much for explorers as they get older. They make what I’ll call “chronos incognita” (instead of terra incognita) look like an adventure! I think I just mixed Greek and Latin for that phrase, but perhaps eclecticism is in order when “Tempus fugit” (Latin for “time flies”) and now subs “fugit” too!

I’m logging off for now, but want to share some exciting emails from flyers Doubilet, Lewis, and the president of the Institute of Nautical Archeology in my next post. Meanwhile Happy Birthday to Dr Eugenie Clark (aka The Shark Lady) who may fly underwater when she turns 87!

To discovery and flying beneath the waves (real and metaphorical)!

©Lisa Sonne