[Auto] Christmas road test 2022: Griffon Hoverwork 12000TD

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On a clear day, if you stand on one side of the Solent and peer across at the other, with a bit of guidance you will soon see it once it leaves its pad and starts to build pace: this small object in the distance, moving fast among the far more sluggardly yachts, liners and tankers around it, kicking up spray as it accelerates towards its maximum speed. 

Around eight minutes after you first make it out, it will be upon you, making a distinct buzz that, once heard, you will never mistake for anything else, as it skims across shingle (in Southsea) or sand (in Ryde), flying on a bed of air so delicately that it could run over an egg without breaking it.

As this incongruous yet familiar craft settles on its concrete pad and, skirt deflating, rests gently onto its hull, a timer measuring the five-mile journey from one side of the Solent to the other will tick over at just 10 minutes. 

The Griffon Hoverwork 12000TD – commonly known as the Isle of Wight hovercraft – is the fastest way to cross the Solent, the strait that separates the British mainland from the Isle of Wight. It’s a route that two current craft, identical 12000TDs called Solent Flyer and Island Flyer, have plied since they entered service in 2016, having been built by Griffon not too far away on the south coast and operated by its sister company, Hovertravel. 

The hovercraft is unique in its ability to travel across both water and land, or an otherwise impassable mixture of the two. The Hovertravel service is the only year-round scheduled hovercraft service anywhere in the world, in the summer departing as often as every 15 minutes. Fittingly, if somewhat belatedly, it’s the first hovercraft to become the subject of Autocar’s Christmas road test.

Design and engineering 

Buy a ‘ticket to Ryde’ in Southsea and you’ll walk through a waiting area and onto a concrete pad, so things feel more like an old airport departure lounge than a ferry terminal. And that’s fitting, because a hovercraft owes as much to the aerospace industry as it does to marine engineering. For the first few decades of the machine’s existence, operations were even governed by the Civil Aviation Authority rather than maritime authorities. Well, it does fly, after all, albeit at quite a low altitude. 

The hovercraft was conceived by Christopher Cockerell, an engineer who had bought a boat hire company and wondered how to make them go faster. Moving through air is a lot easier than moving through water, so he figured it would be better if you could lift your boat out of the sea. Thus inspired, and using two tin cans and a vacuum cleaner, he proved the concept at home before patenting the idea in 1955 – and in doing so, laid out some principles that still apply today. 

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/features/christmas-road-test-2022-griffon-hoverwork-12000td