Beaver Lake hides a lot of hidden gems, but one man's homemade submarine dives beneath the waves! We take you along for this underwater ride in this week's adventure Arkansas.
"We all live in a yellow submarine, a Yellow Submarine, a yellow submarine." While Scott Waters doesn't live in it, he built his yellow submarine himself and took us along as he tested it out beneath Beaver Lake. It took him over 5 years to build, and it's able to take two people down to depths of 350 feet.
"As long as I've known I've been interested, and I've been just all my life drawing blueprints and about 7 or 8 years ago is when I started building it."
Once construction on the submarine aptly named "Trustworthy" was complete, it was time to dive. "People always ask me if I was scared the first time and I wasn't, I was just really focused on driving it. The first time I was just bumping into everything but now I just can glide over the bottom."
Despite the water being murky, the visuals down below can offer so exciting surprises in Beaver Lake. "It's anything you would expect to see when you are SCUBA diving. At this lake there's all kinds of wrecks and different things for SCUBA divers to see and you'll never know what you'll run into."
Water's friend Mike Young, who owns KISS Rebreathers in Fort Smith, explains it doesn't exactly drive like a car. "It doesn't stop fast. It doesn't take off fast. And steering is very slow and so it's a bit difficult to drive."
Waters submarine doesn't offer regular tours for the public. However Young, who helped with parts of this sub, says there's plenty of ways to get involved in underwater exploration. He explains how his rebreathing equipment works. "It removed the CO2 and you add a little bit of oxygen. So you have a small container of oxygen you can dive for 6 to 10 hours on."
Young says he spent over a year exploring the Blue Spring underwater cave system near Eureka Springs. He says the best way to get your feet wet is training, and to check out Discover SCUBA classes. "No cost for that, and you don't have to buy any equipment up front, and it gives you a chance to see if you like it or not before you invest any money in it."
Waters has more plans to take his submarine to shipwrecks off the coast of South Carolina.
Video Courtesy of Mike Young
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