Lunoblog

It was only a matter of time, observing nature (somewhat a biomimetic thought) a few people experimented with underwater surfing. I have seen many times dolphins surfing the waves in California sometimes going into a barrel, accelerating full throttle to be in front totally submerged and catch the underwater surf . Time the set, duck down and accelerate to surf. Control is hard at first but like everything it takes time, a good breath hold and practice. Noa’s post about underwater surfing on deeper blue forum  is as good of a description as one could do on the subject, he is in essence a true Lunosapien.

Web designer virtuoso Matt D. Smith came to my desk this morning to ask: ” Could you define Hydrotouring in one sentence?”.  I was bugged by the “in one sentence” part of the question as Hydrotour involves such a wide range of activities, from ocean orienteering to auqabatics or just the good ole times and stories that come after a day of roaming the ocean with a pod of friends around a bonfire on the beach.  That intense sense of satisfaction at night when you close your eyes, vivid images of your day come back on your mind’s cinema screen,cruising with a whale shark for an hour after breaching out of the water a couple of times…

“Hey man? you there?” Matt brought me back from dreamworld and after a short moment of silence he said “it sounds like  off-shore backpacking in its simplest form”. I nodded in approbation, “simple is fun” I concluded.

Hydrotouring in one sentence was born.

Until next time check out the new Hydrotouring page on www.lunocet.com! 

cheers,

015~

Disclaimer: Sea Otters do not eat PBJ’s! Lunosapiens do.

” Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but 
when there is nothing left to remove.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

Following the same philosophy applied by Ted himself on his product design, Studio mds and the Ciamillo “sinktank” have come up with a new design for the website. After reading your emails and comments we made a list of things that needed to be addressed and brainstormed to find a way to achieve simple beautiful design while focus on being understood even by non native speakers (as we are dealing with worldwide sales). 

Do not hesitate to give us feedback!

015~

Although stated in this title, I am not to enumerate the 10 reasons as I believe your imagination is fertile enough to come up with answers. But as I now have your attention, I shall share a few thoughts with you on how we, lunosapiens feel about the great white shark. Note that I put shark after great white, as “Great White” is a hollywood term that somewhat helped in bringing this animal to the endangered specie list appendix II. Peter Benchley if you only knew what kind of impact you were to create when you wrote Jaws…

Both Ted and I have had the chance to see these absolutely beautiful animals in the wild while diving. Ted was in Australia, I was in Mexico. Although we have a different appreciation of the experience, we come to the same conclusion, these apex predators are absolutely perfect, just watching them evolve underwater is a radical  course on hydrodynamics. I always thought perfection did not exist until I saw that girthy 17 feet long great white shark female swimming effortlessly around  my low tech cage. A monkey underwater? is probably what she was thinking as I was fighting my mind not to sing the two most effective music notes ever played in a movie score.  For a second I felt like she was observing me, she was at the zoo I was in the cage. She came closer and closer to the cage where I finally had the courage to touch her underbelly as she made a close “flyby”.  She disappeared by a few quick graceful tail movement in the blue water, exactly the way she had appeared, in full stealth mode.

Sharks are wild animals and can be extremely dangerous if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but they are far from being this monstrous aggressive animal portrayed in over-shown-blood-bath-feeding-frenzy footage on sensational tv shows. 100 millions sharks killed a year by humans versus maybe 10 lethal shark attacks on humans annually. Who do you think of the two should fear the other?

For shark preservation and ocean conservation check out :

ORCA (Ocean Research & Conservation)

Oceana Save The Shark

Sharks Protection & Preservation

015~


 

“What happened you guys!?” is a quote from Southpark character Eric Cartman when he opened up the  Lunocet website this morning. Change is inevitable isn’t it? Especially after listening to an interview with GM vice chairman Bob Lutz who do not subscribe to the global warming theory but also happens to be the project manager of the chevy Volt fully electric car. Humm…let me think about that for a sec. As Stephen Colbert mentioned you can still plug in your chevy electric car for a charge into your Hummer cigarette lighter if you do not believe in global warming.

On the other hand our beloved Lunocet has zero emission and at times zero gravity. So what’s with the design change? Instead of two sections for the trailing edge ,we now have one single piece of silicone rubber, we also increased the durometer to have a more rigid piece which translates into more power.

The newly designed “center jet” (the piece that links the footplates and the silicone trailing edge) lower the footplates resistance and makes for better hydrodynamics. Foot pockets now come closer to the end of the toe plate allowing a better power transfer. Faster,better,stronger.

There are more tricks to it than this but I feel some mystery shall remain until we release the new video.

Stay tuned for more!

015~

Nerds is what we’d rather be called,and as such we’d like to correct a few wrong messages in the press and on this Oustide magazine article. On the first Lunocet serie we had a fiber glass Lunocet coming at a price of $1250. We decided the longevity and lighthtness was not up to our standards so we now only manufacture the best. The carbon fiber unit with aluminium footplates and titanium hardware coming at

$1800. One price,one Lunocet easy,chic but not geek.

We never saw it coming, too busy to dream about new ways to propel oneself in the liquid world. Both TV and  press want a piece of our world, now the question is how do we communicate our passion to you the reader/viewer? Editing is crucial to communicate the magic surrounding Ciamillo Components, the Lunocet, Zero gravity bike and the Subhuman project. Jules Verne himself would have had a hard time to visualize the complexity of our advanced “dream-technologies-materializing-under-close supervision of CNC machinery” company.  Ted admitted to me last week that not only does he dream of new designs at night but he visualizes his  creations in full 3 D. He then wakes up and operate a direct dream transfer to solid edge (our design software). It is just a matter of time until we can put a USB port on Ted’s head so we can plug him in directly on the CNC.

A good friend of mine and academy award winner documentary filmmaker told me “fantasy is somewhat closer to reality than you think”. I know now for sure as my world is composed of Lunosapiens a cross breed in between man and dolphin, a massive human propelled submarine and a million gallon pond filled with many unique fish. All of this came out of one man’s fantasy world and now is so real that it is hard to portray.

015~

Your mind is focused on the number fifteen, you look at your watch pivoting then shifting your weight to initiate the descent, your feet on the aluminum plate: the accelerator on a racecar. You start counting fifteen kicking cycles, fifteen vertical meters from the surface for exactly a 15th fraction of a second in levitation. When your face emerges, fresh air is enough to engage the automatic lower back bending necessary to trigger the breach.  You are now in the moment, your body in mid air, frozen in time. 150 frames per second would not be enough to capture the smile on your face. You hear the characteristic noise of a camera shutter as your body meets the water again, all your muscles relax, your mind is now clear. 

Ancient civilizations like the Philistines and the Babylonians had worshipped fishtailed gods, several stories on underwater creatures half human half fish have survived, manifesting themselves in written parchments or artworks from the Byzantine empire to the Romans. We as “Homo Industrialis” dismiss all these stories as myth and somewhat challenge the intelligence of earlier civilizations for believing in such childish stories. But what if?

We have now freedivers diving to depth to 113 meters (371 ft) holding their breath for over 10 minutes. With the Lunocet we will have humans cruising in open water at speeds only marine mammals could achieve. The breaching is just a matter of time, imagine that day where as you walk on the beach, you watch in the surf a  ”pod” of human playing in the water as a pod of dolphin approach them to invite them into their water games.

We are born in water, 66 percent of our body is composed of water, and our blue planet? 70 percent of it is covered with water (probably more in the decades to come).  In the US alone more than 50 percent of the population live right by the Ocean. We are attracted to it yet we can’t define why. The Lunosapien could really well be the next phase in human evolution. Remarkable books that inspired this reflection on the liquid world are: “Underworld” by Graham Hancock and “Homo Delphinus” by Jacques Mayol.  It is not about finding the right answers but rather asking the right questions.

015~

We are actively working on setting up demo days in the next couple of months, to convince you that the Lunocet is the only way to explore the blue . As we mentioned previously you can try on  a Lunocet at the DEMA pool in Las Vegas October 22nd-25th. Also we will have a Demo in Fort Lauderdale.,FL the first week-end of November. We are looking at New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles as well.

Please keep checking the blog for further info on the demo schedule.

015~