Hopefully the island won't be inundated with Clinton News Network subscribers following this unwelcome publicity, we are still recovering from Cowes week...
Helpfully though the Ryde-Southsea hover craft is frequently out of action for technical 'issues' and at least never carries cars.
I've used it many times and yes there are occasional breakdowns, but to be fair that is true of all the ferry services. Personally I love hovercraft and my grandad worked for Cockerell on the SRN-1, as soon as a budget belated became available for development. I am surprised CNN chose that photo when the USMC for example have armed and armoured behemoths to showcase..
I never knew thay were banned from the Broads but Ican see why.
I am old enough(sadly)to remember when the first hovercraft arrived in Dover and landed on the beach. I assume that was an SRN1? I was very young but when they took off it flung pebbles everywhere and the crowd got stoned
Skirts were the big break-through. Look at the SRN-1's huge lift fan, from which trunking directs the puny propulsion thrust over air rudders. Compare with today's vessels, with big ducted thrust fans, and far less power needed for lift.
Hovercraft have similar ability to handle inclement weather as pretty much all other high speed craft of similar size and particularly weight, they are not notably bad.
Hovercraft are only noisy if they are designed to be so(or rather not designed to be quiet); there are cruising hovercraft now that are as quiet or quieter than the average stinkpot, the first generation of inefficient integrated fan designs running aircooled two stroke motorbike engines with expansion chambers and fans running well beyond their recommended speed has locked them in the "noisy, smelly and anti-social" category for many despite technology and design maturity moving on in the last 30 years. They are not difficult to control, just different.
In the 60s/70s light hovercraft were almost exclusively the preserve of the keen amateur; some of design decisions made in early craft were driven almost entirely by what was available and in any case what was desired for the most part was performance for racing above all else. Motorcycle and similar lightweight aircooled engines from snowmobiles etc, overdriving industrial fans in order to provide the desired performance at the cost of a lot of noise and premature blade failure, in order to feed high pressure skirts; none of which is remotely conducive to quiet operation. The likes of Barry Palmer of Sevtec lead the way toward quietness, use of 4 stroke engines, very large slow turning fans and propellors and low pressure skirts; his design ethos has lead to designs like the Otter which despite your doubt is very quiet, even at speed; it is possible to hold a normal conversation at cruising speed and there's no need for ear defenders.
