by David Ball
Staff Writer
Kurt Peterson loves the Jacksonville Landing, but sometimes the drive in from his office in Green Cove Springs and the fight with Downtown traffic can be a little aggravating.
But next summer, Peterson thinks he’ll have a better way to get there – aboard one of the largest and most expensive hovercrafts ever built.
“I want to drive the hovercraft up the St. Johns, park at the Landing and eat some buffalo wings at Hooters,” said Peterson. “It will look exactly like a UFO coming down the river, but that’s OK. This technology will work.”
The technology Peterson and his team at Atlas Hovercraft are creating is a leap forward in a transportation option that has existed for more than 40 years, but is almost non-existent in the U.S.
Peterson has invested millions of his own dollars and decades of groundwork in order to break into the highly competitive and highly monopolized mass transportation industry.
He has grown his company from two to 25 employees in three years and is now the largest hovercraft manufacturer in the world, with his only two competitors residing in Europe. And yet, Atlas hasn’t sold one thing.
However, people are beginning to buy into Peterson’s ultimate dream to solve some of the world’s transportation problems through the use of large, safe, fast, efficient, low-polluting and relatively quiet hovercrafts, and Jacksonville could be one of the first areas to benefit.
Jacksonville Transportation Authority officials have made several trips to the Atlas facility on the heels of a $200,000 study to determine the feasibility of water-borne mass transit.
JTA spokesman Mike Miller said he expects results of the study, being completed by Cambridge Systematics out of Fort Lauderdale, to come back by January. If the study concludes such a system is feasible, the JTA would issue a request for proposals and Atlas would have a chance to bid.
“It’s very exciting to see there’s a company of that sort in the Jacksonville area,” Miller said. “What they’re proposing could have some very positive impacts, not just for what we’re studying but for other water-borne transportation.
“On the other hand, we are also waiting with great anticipation to see the first one (hovercraft) in operation,” he added. “There are some big issues that need to be addressed.”
Issues include noise, which has plagued hovercrafts that have traditionally used airplane turbines as power, and how wind fields generated by the crafts could affect other vessels.
Cost is another concern, and the biggest hurdle is likely the infrastructure required to serve the hovercrafts along the river.
“It’s not just a commuter service taking people and cars, but on the weekends we’d be using it for recreation, like taking people from Jacksonville to the zoo,” said Miller. “The park-and-rides would need waterfront property, which is extremely expensive. There’s an awful lot of work to go.”
Peterson said his hovercraft design has solved nearly all of those issues, and he intends to prove it by beginning a Miami-to-Key West ferry that will take 150 people across the Atlantic Ocean at a comfortable and steady 65 miles per hour. A six-hour drive becomes two-and-a-half hour trip.
A $138 round-trip ticket would make the cost 42 cents per mile, as opposed to a round-trip plane ticket of $237 (current Travelocity rate) for a cost of 72 cents per mile. Peterson said the same economics could be applied to hovercraft ferries running up and down the St. Johns.
“The thing that I first saw about the St. Johns River was that as much as it unites our community, it also separates us. It’s a natural barrier,” said Peterson. “It is far under-utilized. What I see with the St. Johns is a liquid highway to move people not just across, but up and down.”
It’s easy to be influenced in by Peterson’s rhetoric. He even refers to himself as the “Pied Piper of hovercrafts,” and a child during a recent tour of Atlas called him the “Willy Wonka of hovercrafts.”
Walking through Atlas at Reynolds Industrial Park is a bit like walking through Wonka’s chocolate factory. Peterson first tours the one-story offices housing his lead engineer Bill Hayden and logistics manager Jay McCleary (the original two employees).
“I have to take out what’s in his brain and put it on paper,” said Hayden.
McCleary quickly followed, “Then I’ve got to prove to everybody else it’s a good business idea.”
Peterson then moves to a meeting room holding maps of his Miami-to-Key West route and samples of the composite materials used on his hovercraft. Think plastics as hard as steel but one-fifth the weight, fiberglass and resins all “welded” together by other composite glues.
He then opens an inconspicuous door and in pour the sights and sounds of a working shipyard, except without the ship. In the far distance, on top of the tarmac once used when the industrial park was a Navy base, sits the 120-foot-long and 66-foot-wide skeleton Peterson hopes will prove his ambition right.
“There she is,” said Peterson with a definite sense of pride. “The world’s most advanced hovercraft.”
The craft is nearly three stories tall, and it will rise another 8 feet when its rubber apron is eventually attached and inflated. A few crew members and 150 passengers will fit comfortably on board the main cabin and upstairs first-class section.
Two Caterpillar diesel engines will sit at the front and back of the hovercraft, with hospital-rated generator mufflers silencing the noise. The engines will drive four huge fans blowing a steady stream of air into the apron, which will only require a half-pound of pressure per square inch to make the vessel float. Think of the 35-psi capacity of car tires and up to 120-psi capacity in bike tires for comparison.
The key is, surface area, and the hovercrafts flat bottom covers a large amount of it. The air acts like ball bearings that allow the craft to move over land, water and ice with little friction. Four other fans on the second deck point the craft in different directions and allow it to move front and back, side-to-side, turn and stop with ease.
When the hovercraft is not operating, it sits stable on land and floats in water like a typical boat, but that’s the only time it mimics a boat.
“That’s one of the biggest things,” said Peterson. “There’s no water being sucked in to cool the engines and there’s no hard structure, no rudder, no propeller in the water. It’s the only manatee-safe ferry in the world.”
As for cost, Peterson is asking for $10 million per vessel. He said the initial high price will become a wash after five years just in terms of fuel savings over similar-sized traditional ferries, with can burn up to 400 gallons an hour. Peterson said his hovercraft will burn about 125 gallons an hour, and he expects a ferry operation could bring in as much as $20 million each year.
“Plus, you are traveling twice as fast as your competitor and therefore doing twice the business,” he said. “But we see other uses too, like for transport or search and rescue or evacuation. There are so many applications where it could be used.”
However, Peterson said he doesn’t plan to sell any hovercrafts in the near future. Because there is no ready stable of pilots or supporting commercial industry for hovercrafts, Atlas will have to operate, staff and maintain its own products.
Peterson said that’s what it takes to create a new industry, but he doesn’t expect to stay alone for long.
“There’s going to be more now that we exist. It’s always monkey see, monkey do in business,” he said. “But unless you are willing to risk in business, you’re not going to win.”