Hovercraft turns heads, arouses interest and curiosity while visiting NS Southwest

EAST PUBNICO, YARMOUTH COUNTY, NS — It’s not every day that a 25-foot hovercraft calls into a port of call in southwestern Nova Scotia.

The 55-ton Penac arrived at the Lower East Pubnico yard on 20 June for a three-day layover to do some maintenance on the vessel and to visit friends.

The Penac was originally built in 1984 by the British Hovercraft Corporation for use as a passenger ship in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was sold in 1997 after a bridge made the ship obsolete.

In 2004, the ship was acquired by the Canadian Coast Guard and remained in service in British Columbia for search and rescue missions until 2017.

It was eventually declared surplus there and purchased last year by Caraquet, New Brunswick-based company North East Diving Construction.

“We serviced it all winter, from January to the end of April,” says co-owner Gino LeBlanc. “We had to re-energize the craft and do a lot of maintenance on it to make it good and reliable.”

The ship also had to undergo sea trials and was certified by Transport Canada.

In mid-May, the Penac was loaded onto the freighter BBC Washington, which carried it up the west coast, across the Pacific Ocean, through the Panama Canal, and up the east coast to Baltimore, Maryland.

“We launched the vessel in Baltimore. We spent a few days there. We left Baltimore and headed for New York, Boston, Rhode Island, Cape Cod. We stopped in Grand Manan. We made several stops each day – day sailing,” said LeBlanc.

The journey from Baltimore to Caraquet, NB is 1,500 miles, LeBlanc said.

“It is quite a long distance. A hovercraft of this size has never been able to go out into the ocean and cover so many miles,” he said during the port of call in East Pubnico, Yarmouth County.

LeBlanc said the trip was great.

“It was great down in the United States. Everywhere, every time we stopped, the locals served us food,” he said, noting, of course, that the ship aroused a lot of curiosity.

“Sunday (June 18) we stopped in Grand Manan. We spent two days in Grand Manan. We have some friends there, great people there,” he said. “We left Grand Manan on Tuesday (June 20) and ended up here in East Pubnico. We have friends here so we stopped to visit and the hovercraft needs some maintenance. It’s like a race car. Every time you do a two day race does, there is maintenance… a vessel like that can’t run for weeks like a normal ship or a normal yacht. It’s a lot of maintenance.”

The Penac has four large engines with a total of 2,800 HP. It runs between 35-45 knots, sometimes 50 knots, LeBlanc said.

“It’s pretty good if you’re on a 55-ton hovercraft going 50 miles per hour. It’s a good idea,” he said, adding that it doesn’t take long to get from point A to point B.

“It walks on a cushion of air. It’s a nice aerial vehicle,” LeBlanc said.

As for the ship’s seaworthiness, LeBlanc said the Penac can handle a two-meter wave “no problem.”

“After ten feet of waves, it starts to get a little rough, then you have to judge,” LeBlanc said, adding other factors, such as how much fuel is on board.

The Penac has a cockpit as opposed to a wheelhouse, with room for three people and many instruments and gauges on the control panels.

“When you take off, you have your elevator motor. You start your lift motor and the whole craft lifts off the ground. It rises about six feet into the air and then you hover over the surface.”

The Penac has bow thrusters like a boat to swing the front. But the thrusters on the hovercraft are air powered through large funnels on both sides of the ship, unlike a boat where they are part of the hull.

The Penac left East Pubnico on Friday, June 23, with plans to head for Halifax, about 200 nautical miles away.

“We will fill up in Halifax and we will try – if the weather is good and the sea is good – to make it to the Canso Canal and then make it through the weekend (keep going). We’ll probably stop in Shediac, New Brunswick, to refuel and then the last leg of two weeks on the ocean is Caraquet, New Brunswick – our hometown.

LeBlanc is a co-owner of North East Diving Construction in Caraquet.

“We primarily do marine work… inspections, wharf reconstruction, boat slip construction – we mainly work for a few general contractors, but we do our own construction jobs and we work for Public Works Canada, Department of Transportation New Brunswick and DFO. “

Adding the Penac to the company’s fleet opens up a number of new opportunities, LeBlanc said.

“We will offer our service. We can break ice for the early fishing season to avoid interaction with whales for snow crab. We can search and rescue. We can deliver, with a capacity of 12 tons of cargo on board, so if someone wants something fast, we can do it fast.

“It’s a new ship for the company if we ever need it and if we don’t need it for a short while it will be a fun toy to play with,” LeBlanc said.

A steady stream of spectators made their way to the Lower East Pubnico to watch the Penac while it was there. Many were welcomed aboard and some were allowed to go for a ride.

The Penac is the only privately owned hovercraft of its size in North America, LeBlanc said.

“The government has two in Montreal and two in Vancouver, the US military has huge ones. Privately owned, we are the only ones in North America.”