HOMELAND SECURITY POLICY INSTITUTE GROUP

St. Pete Times
02/12/07
Lake Butler

No one believed him when said he would build one someday.

Like many boys, Reynolds Marion dreamed of military seagoing vessels. For Marion, it was submarines.
When he was growing up in Virginia, Marion drew a picture of a submarine he was going to build one day.

Nobody believed him, not even his sister, who bet him $20 that he would never build it.

About four years ago, Marion consulted his wife and they shut down a successful auto collision repair shop. He then set out to pursue his boyhood dream.

"It's evolved over the years from several drawings to this," said Marion, 43, standing next to the first prototype of the Marion Hyper-Sub.

Despite being a high school graduate and focusing on auto repairs all of his adult life, Marion has researched what makes subs work for more than 30 years.

"I have been obsessed with submarines since I was 11, and I have spent thousands of hours studying sub designs," he said.

In a three-bay shop just outside Lake Butler and across the road from a cow pasture, Marion claims he's making history by building a 26-foot speedboat and submersible craft.

He and more than 100 investors expect to have spent about $1.5-million on the prototype by the time it is water tested in April. After a sea trial and building a second prototype, Marion hopes to begin assembling the craft in about two years.

But first, Marion is competing against another minisub company in a Rand Corp. study, which could result in Pentagon funding to build it for the Navy SEALS and other special operations forces. The analysis by Rand, a nonprofit institution that conducts research and analysis for government and private industry, is expected to be complete this spring, Marion said.

Besides the military, there are commercial uses for the sub in the oil, gas and tourist industries, Marion said.

The boat is built with all off-the-shelf parts and uses principles of physics never put in this combination on a submersible craft, he said. Those who have seen the boat know the principles and the parts, and they say, "Why didn't I think of it?" Marion said.

Gene Mock of Lake Butler was installing doors on industrial buildings and fabricating fiberglass boat hulls in his spare time when Marion told him he was building a submarine. Mock was skeptical at first but became a believer when the first shipments of steel were delivered to Marion's shop. Shortly after, he joined the project as its assembly supervisor.

"I am proud to be a part of this because this prototype is the world's first," Mock said.