[ggm]

I also did the SRN 4 as a passenger and subsequently "cabbed" the flight deck when it wound up in a museum. Grandad of an offspring's schoolchum took us round the collection out of hours.

He used to fly them (and emphatically said they were flown and he was captain and captain-pilot. There was a turf war between the civil aviation authority and the maritime regulator over who had primacy, depending on if the skirt was lifting or it was floating on the sea) and wound up both volunteering at the museum, and driving end of life (normal) boats up onto cox's harbour mudflats for manual wrecking: a heartbreaking job for a seafaring man.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/gx6a7UPQX4CLfz7Q9 (scans from photos)

From memory, the hover was fast but very very bumpy. Sometimes they suggested timid people use a boat. It was aircraft style seating, not like a ship at all. And very noisy.

[cjrp]

Taking the Hoverspeed is the only time I remember being sea-sick, and it wasn't even a particularly rough day.