Beyond The Lunosapiens: A Tale About Lunocet

It took me quite a while to decide to write this post but I feel now is the time. I received a few emails asking for explanations, in the past 6 months after leaving Ciamillo Components Inc. in Georgia, the company and CNC machine shop behind the cycling company Zero Gravity,The Subhuman Project and Lunocet. I was VP of Marketing for Lunocet and involved in the Subhuman project as well. I am sad I had to go because in the beginning, I truly enjoyed working with Ted Ciamillo the brilliant mind behind all these different products. Most importantly, I made two fantastic friends and extremely talented individuals Christian R. Foster (the VP of Zero Gravity at the time) and Matt D. Smith (Web Designer extraordinaire from Studio MDS), we called our brainstorming trio “The Sink Tank” as we where heavily involved in promoting the rather surreal underwater world Ted created.

To give you an idea our office was a huge open area (allowing massive amounts of brainstorming and productivity) atop the rather noisy CNC machine floor all of which in a barn style building (A beautiful combination of wood and Steel) built by Ted and his team. A million gallon pond in the back was there to test any aquatic device (test the Lunocet and Sub but made for a great place to refresh oneself  in the hot and humid Georgian summers) invented by Ted. We had everything to make it big. All passionate, young and visionary nothing seem to be able to stop us. But as the venture grew Matt, Christian and I quickly realized that Ted was the sole king of the castle and we were all getting  micromanaged to the point of limiting our ideas/creativity, most of all we thought it prevented the expansion of the company. I was the first to leave and as the economy turned sour both Christian and Matt left. Needless to say the Sink tank was gone.

As for the Lunocet here are my most objective thoughts:

Does the Lunocet work? YES it does, but still needs a lot of work in R&D collaborating with a team of professional swimmers and freedivers (because of the use of monofin in the sport some became rather expert in the art of dolphin kicking) to provide constant feedback, and for the feedback to be studied. At the time I worked there I had started a collaboration with a few top monofin swimmers worldwide, top freedivers, and triathletes to get this feedback and improve the Lunocet. When I left back in December 2008, the Lunocet was too stiff, generating too much lactic acid to consider any kind of long distance swimming. I would recommend reading the great article “Concerning The Lunocet” by Chris Morey.

The future of hydrofoils? well I have to admit I can’t see the future of open water swimming with a monofin not involving the hydrofoil technology, also having comfortable cycling shoes ( an idea of the Sink Tank) instead of the rubber foot pocket “torture” makes sense, not only for comfort but efficiency in the most crucial point of power transfer.

I am looking forward to the future of open water swimming and freediving, and I am glad I was able to be at one point part of it.

The Sink Tank is dead LONG LIVE THE SINK TANK!