Vancouver Island Hovercraft

It is said that hindsight is always 20/20 but I'm thinking that not a lot of us are going to want to "look back" at 2020 any time soon. Here's wishing you all a much safer and happier 2021. Hope to see you out on the water in the near future but for now, stay safe and stay warm. Regards, Rob

I am sad to say that with COVID and all the associated shut-downs I really didn't get the hovercraft out much this year. It was promising to be a busy season with some work on the Fraser river but that really didn't pan-out and the local tourist/training work was cancelled as well. Hopefully 2021 will be a better year. I have been going through some of my Youtube videos and found a couple that I'd like to share of the Sevtec Surveyor hovercraft in action. This video is a training run out on the mudflats (and booming grounds when the tide is high enough) near Chemainus BC. The area is also a delta for the Chemainus River so there are channels cut into the bottom that makes for some interesting hovercraft handling. Apologies for the bouncy camera but it was a bit of a bumpy ride. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM4pZfMUseM&t=28s

Here's a few long-overdue pictures from a hovercraft run we did in the summer. The trip was from Ladysmith Harbour to Ganges Harbour on Saltspring Island with a stop at Montague Harbour on Galiano Island. The weather was good for hovering, warm but not much wind and mostly calm water so we made good speed cruising around 25 knots at 3/4 throttle bouncing over the occasional wake from some big boat pushing a huge bow wave but otherwise a smooth ride. Here are a couple of pictu...res at the Montague Harbour Marine Park beach as well as a couple of pictures of a large landing craft that we spotted on a barge in Ganges Harbour. There are a lot of boats at anchor in Ganges in various states of repair (or disrepair). I did a bit of searching about the landing craft, it is a canadian flagged vessel owned by a BC company but not much more to be found about it... intriguing vessel... kinda partial to the paint scheme See more

I am reaching-out to hovercraft enthusiasts in Canada to join a resource and discussion group. This is a resource and sharing opportunity for Canadian hovercraft owners, builders and pilots. We have some serious challenges in our sector right now including unprecedented changes to marine insurance policies. The goal for this page is to is to promote the use of hovercraft in Canada and to mutually-support those of us who build or fly hovercraft in Canada. Please consider joining this group. Thank you, Rob

I met a very interesting retired fellow recently who shared a remarkable hovercraft story with me. Back in the mid 1960’s this fellow was working in Norman Wells NWT (which is on the Mackenzie River) and he told me about a large hovercraft being tested in the region while he was living there. The craft started its testing in Tuktoyutuk and then traveled 400 miles to Norman Wells where it was disassembled and transported out by transport aircraft. He didn’t have any pictures o...f the craft and mentioned that everyone was briefed that this was a secret project requiring all of the locals to sign non-disclosure papers... but as a token of appreciation the craft spent 2 days offering rides on the Mackenzie River for the villagers which is perhaps Canada’s first recorded Hover-Tour operation! After a bit of research (thank you Google) I found reference to the trials of an SRN5 in northern Canada in 1966 and I also found a film that was done about the project. Here is a link to the film (note it is a historical film so some of the language is from a different era). https://www.bpvideolibrary.com/record/305 See more

A good reminder about staying off of the mudflats... this puts 'on-foot" rescuers at risk as well. This is one of the reasons the RNLI has rescue hovercraft as years ago there were a series of fatalities on the mud flats in England and they then brought in the Griffon rescue hovercraft into their fleet. Also some of the fire departments in England use hovercraft for rescue such as this on the mudflats. Hats-off to the Port Moody Fire rescue staff for this challenging rescue.