Today I Learned

The Dobbertin Surface Orbiter is a hand built amphibious vehicle built by Rick Dobbertin The Orbiter was fabricated completely from stainless steel and was designed to circumnavigate the Earth, over land and sea without any type of support vessel. For nearly three years, Rick was in an unprecedented position to study amphibious craft design having actually lived aboard the Orbiter throughout a 28-country, 38-state adventure dubbed Project Earth-Trek. During the trip, which covered 30,000 miles on land and 3,000 miles at sea, he encountered everything on land from the smooth, well-kept highways of the United States to the pot-holed, wash-boarded dirt paths in the frontier of Colombia. While on the water, he encountered every sea condition from the dead-calm waters in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York to eighteen-foot seas in the Caribbean's Mona Passage on a crossing from The Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. Throughout the trip, Rick also had the advantage of seeing, first hand, the interest ge