Hovercraft temporarily ashore on a Nanaimo beach drawing a crowd
CTV
Since Saturday, a hovercraft has been ashore at Departure Bay beach in Nanaimo, causing quite the curiosity from onlookers.
Since Saturday, a hovercraft has been ashore at Departure Bay beach in Nanaimo, causing quite the curiosity from onlookers.
“A lot of questions,” says Gino Leblanc, co-owner of the hovercraft. “At the beginning, everybody thought it was a coast guard operation.”
The hovercraft, named Penac (meaning fair winds), was in fact a coast guard vessel based in Richmond, but has been decommissioned since 2017 and was recently purchased by Northeast Diving Ltd. out of New Brunswick.
The new owners and crew have been in Richmond at the Coast Guard Hovercraft Base since the new year. Where, with the help from the Canadian Coast Guard, they have been doing a lot of maintenance on the vessel and familiarizing themselves with it.
The crews sailed across the strait to Nanaimo on Saturday, where they are waiting for a yacht carrier vessel to arrive, which it will be loaded onto.
The cargo ship will then transport the hovercraft to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, going through the Panama Canal. From there, it will be offloaded and its crew will sail the 3,500 km to the Maritimes, which will be the farthest voyage a commercial hovercraft has ever traveled.
The hovercraft will be used in their commercial diving operations and could be used for other tasks as well, like ice-breaking and moving cargo.
