John and
Maureen Wright live on an island in Buckthorn, Ontario, Canada. Sounds like a
dream for these two retirees from law enforcement, right? Well, it is – now that
they have a hovercraft!
The
problem with their dream life has been ice. During much of the year, the
partially frozen water surrounding their island makes it difficult for them to
travel between their home and the mainland. “We’ll use the hovercraft to get back and forth from island to mainland
when the water’s not hard enough to walk on or it’s too hard to put a boat on,”
says John.
But before
they took their new Neoteric craft back to Canada, John and Maureen first went
through training at HTC. As John explains, “I
took training to learn how to drive a car. And I’m a scuba diver; I wouldn't think about putting on a suit and tanks and going to a hundred feet without
training. You don’t fly a plane without taking some instruction – you’re gonna
crash. Same thing goes with this.”
Maureen
agreed, “I need to be in it and see it
explained for me to be comfortable. Training is just a commonsense thing to me.”
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At the
Wabash River training site, instructor Chris Fitzgerald teaches the Wrights how
to unload their hovercraft from its trailer.
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John takes
the controls, while instructor Fitzgerald provides constant direction.
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Back at
HTC headquarters after a successful training day, John and Maureen receive their
hovercraft pilot certifications from Chris Fitzgerald (center).
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At the
conclusion of their training, John had some words of advice for those who would
venture out in a hovercraft without training: “It’s like a bar of soap on a bathroom floor – you’d be crashing into
everything! Without training, I can’t even imagine starting off on my own.”
Describing
his first experience in a hovercraft, John says, “The training was excellent! It was a lot different than I imagined –
kind of like an airplane or helicopter that can spin on a dime and go backwards
and forwards and sideways. I was surprised at how maneuverable it was. We’re
going along the shore and I was able to maneuver around stumps and through
things and with the reverse thrust buckets to come up and touch the bank then
back away and come up and touch it again. You’re nine inches above the ground –
it was great!”
A few days
after returning to Canada, John sent us an update and a photo of him easily
flying his hovercraft across partially frozen water …
After getting
out on the ice, John really appreciated his training. He wrote, “Chris, you were right – the craft on ice is
tricky. I liken it to a rocket ship in space where the inertia is exponential.
But it worked beautifully, across the ice to the water.”
No
smashing up for the Wrights, after training at HTC!
