Volodymyr Pylypenko, who made his first submarine dive last year in his native village of Yevhenivka, has defied the popular saying used across the former Soviet Union to denote the improbable - 'a submarine in the steppes of Ukraine'
he muddy water followed seconds later by a tiny, bizarre-looking, green vessel that resembles a large bug rather than the dolphin after which it is named.
The skipper, squeezing through a narrow hatch from his 3.5-meter (10-foot) submarine, hardly looks the swashbuckling type.
Coy and bespectacled, 58-year-old local driver Volodymyr Pylypenko pilots the vessel he designed himself. His pride and excitement are obvious.
'I can hardly explain what I feel down there,' he said, smiling happily after his 10th dive.
'Your heart throbs and you hold your breath when you dive into the unknown. These thrilling moments alone are worth living for.'
Pylypenko, who made his first submarine dive last year, takes special pride in defying the popular saying used across the former Soviet Union to denote anything unreal or impossible – 'a submarine in the steppes of Ukraine'.
The inhabitants of this village some 900 km (560 miles) southeast of the capital Kiev, lacking the social life of the big city, gather at the lake each time they see Pylypenko towing the submarine, mounted on a primitive chassis, behind his old Soviet four-wheel-drive for another diving test.
His is the only functioning submarine in Ukraine. The one obsolete diesel submarine that it inherited from the ex-Soviet Black Sea Fleet is rusting away and lacks electric accumulators.
ARDUOUS START, KGB SUSPICIOUS
Pylypenko's two-seat sub, the construction of which took 20 years, has turned into something much bigger than just a device for winning the respect of his neighbors.
'I did not seek popularity,' he says. 'I built it to have something to live for. You first have a sleepless night, then you change something in the morning, and then you find an even better solution.'
Born in Yevhenivka, a village of 270 residents lost in the windswept steppes of the Donetsk region, Pylypenko acquired his passion for the underwater world after moving to the Azov Sea town of Mariupol, where he worked at a metallurgical plant.
Pylypenko said that practicing aquatic sports in Mariupol, he decided to build an apparatus that would allow him to explore the depths. Returning to Yevhenivka 20 years ago, he started to realize his dream.
Smothered in lilac bushes and mulberry trees, the quiet courtyard of Pylypenko's house saw the start of the project.
'I remember a huge pipe unloaded here,' said Tetyana, Pylypenko's 30-year-old elder daughter. 'My father told neighbors he would build a submarine, but they just laughed at him.'
Pylypenko was deeply hurt by their reaction.
'This attitude nearly killed me,' he said with a sigh. 'Some would gesture with their finger at the head, suggesting I had a cylinder missing and was not quite all there.
'But finally I achieved my goal, although during my first dive many hoped I would never come back to the surface.'
Apart from the psychological stress and misunderstanding, the project left a big gap in the family budget.
'From time to time I would sell a bull or a piglet to get some money to buy gasoline or go round local scrap heaps and look for possible parts,' he said. 'For every screw or bolt I would have to pay in cash or my own moonshine.'
In Soviet times, Pylypenko's slow but steady progress puzzled not only his skeptical neighbors but the local branch of the KGB secret police.
'Police officers, apparently sent by the KGB, visited me and asked why I was building the submarine. They feared I wanted to escape abroad, but I managed to dispel their fears,' Pylypenko said with a smile.
PROJECTS ABOUND, PROBLEMS REMAIN
'Volodymyr is a respected person now,' said Grigory, who calls himself 'an entrepreneur' and assists Pylypenko's dives.
Though pursued by local and foreign journalists, Pylypenko has no time to rest on his laurels.
He wants to improve the Dolphin by increasing the power of two small electric engines to boost underwater speed from the current three knots (3.6 km) an hour and raise the capacity of the Kingston valves for more water displacement to dive faster.
A local mining businessman, described by Pylypenko as 'a fanatic of underwater adventures', has offered to pay $15,000 for the submarine and promised to take it for more serious tests in the Azov and Black Seas, where the water is much clearer.
The self-made inventor says he has still not decided whether to sell his creation.
A fierce admirer of the late French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, he is already thinking of a more grandiose project, which one potential buyer has promised to finance – building a saucer-shaped 'bathyscaph' submarine for four or five people.
Amid all his hectic activity and planning, one thought still gives Pylypenko no rest – the lack of followers.
'I would like my two grandsons to follow in my steps, but football is their only craze,' he says glumly.
But daughter Tetyana and wife Anna, who have followed the submarine saga from the very beginning, remain devoted.
'I never allow them to accompany me to the lake before each dive – crying women before a voyage are an ominous sign for real sailors,' Pyplypenko says. 'But otherwise they help me and always wait impatiently for my return.'
