Hovercraft temporarily ashore on a Nanaimo beach drawing a crowd

A hovercraft is seen ashore in Departure Bay.

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 help from the Canadian Coast Guard, they have been doing 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.

The cargo ship will then transport the hovercraft to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after going through the Panama Canal.

From there, it will be offloaded and its crew will sail the 3,500 kilometres to the Maritimes, which will be the farthest voyage a commercial hovercraft has ever travelled.

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.

It’s expected to be loaded onto the cargo ship in the coming days, and be at its new home in New Brunswick sometime in mid-June.