Duck and Hover

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Off the causeway between Sacramento and Davis, Michael Crisman looks out over the soggy marshes and sees potential hovering on the horizon. In his mind, he can see sleek vessels on cushions of air skimming over sheets of shallow water. He can hear the propellers thrusting the craft forward, emitting a high-pitched whir that sounds like a thousand vacuum cleaners.

His vision: Hovercraft Park, a place where residents and visitors can rent, repair and — for $2 a minute — ride the amphibious vehicles at high speeds across the region’s waterways. At the park, he plans to sell parts, train pilots and host races. He also hopes to create a private hovercraft rescue team to help save lives during floods. To Crisman, such a concept makes perfect sense in the River City, where presently the hovercraft business creates barely a ripple.

At this point, however, the park is but a dream in the distance. Crisman still needs to find the ideal location (the marshes off the causeway are not for sale), and he needs about $100,000 to start.

Here in Sacramento, there are no hovercraft dealerships, no listings in the Yellowbook. The Dept. of Boating and Waterways has no data on the crafts or any list of registered owners in the city. If you ask the Marine Enforcement Detail at the Sacramento County sheriff’s office, you’ll get responses like “We haven’t looked into them” or “I’m not really familiar with hovercraft.”

“The question is, where are they?” says Crisman, 56, who lives in a condo with his wife, Barbara, along the American River. “We’ve got potential flooding problems around here, and global warming. But if you wanted to go out and look at a hovercraft, where would you go?”

Outside the Mainstream

Hovercraft were invented in the 1950s by English engineer Christopher Cockerell, who tested his theory using a vacuum cleaner motor and two cans to create an air-propulsion system. By the end of the decade, a hovercraft, based on his design, had made a crossing from France to England. The industry expanded in the years that followed. British manufacturers built hovercraft for the Royal Navy and commercial craft soon became big enough to carry passengers and cars across the English Channel.

Worldwide, the industry has become a $20 billion to $30 billion business, with one-third of the market in the Americas, according to a market analysis conducted last year by Atlas Hovercraft, a three-year-old company based in Green Cove Springs, Fla. But in the States, the hovercraft is still a niche market. Even though hovercraft are used by the military, by fire-rescue squads and for recreation, the air-cushion vehicles have remained on the fringe of the American mainstream. Most of the world’s hovercraft manufacturers are overseas, and under the Jones Act of 1920, commercial ships used here are not allowed to be built outside the United States, thus protecting the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

“Hovercraft historically have been noisy, expensive and unreliable,” says Keith Whittemore, president of Kvichak Marine Industries, a hovercraft manufacturer based in Seattle, Wash. Typically, Whittemore says, hover-craft have been used in places “where a boat just will not do the job.”

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