Over a recent weekend I travelled to Portsmouth with the Legend. We stayed in an hotel near the sea front but we didn’t get a seaview window, unless you craned your neck, which was a little disappointing. The journey down to Portsmouth was via a car. But the best journeys over the weekend were not by car. Although there were jobs to be done on the island of Portsea as well as one job just off the island we decided to make it adventurous and on the first afternoon we travelled to the Isle Of Wight for my second ever trip there.
The Solent Flyer took us across the Solent to Ryde on the Pile Of Shite in about ten minutes. The maximum speed was around 35mph as measured on my iPhone speed app. The ride was pretty smooth and the whole experience was really good fun. Things I noticed – there are two engines, once the first one starts the skirt inflates a little. Shortly after that the second engine starts. Hovercraft float on a cushion of air and that air is retained by the skirt – I have a piece of repurposed discarded skirt at home now – the forward motion is provided by the big fans at the rear of the machine. I’ve been trying to get technical details off the internets but all I can find is length and payload.
I’ve just found some engine specifications and they are MAN V12s specially designed for hovercraft. They are 24.24 litre capacity and are air cooled as hovercraft don’t touch the water. Each engine produces around 1079HP and means the hovercraft could travel at up to 50 knots. The lift fans are electrically powered by the diesels and then the thrust fans are shaft powered. Noise inside the passenger cabin was surprisingly low.
Both outward and return journeys were smooth and I was super impressed with the transition from ground to water, there was no noticeable difference, which I should have expected. The windows are a struggle to keep clear because of sea-travel and big fans so the views weren’t amazing but I could see enough. After travelling to Ryde I asked to see the cockpit (because I’m a child at heart) and it was super impressive. Ryde itself was a bit of a shithole. But at least I have now been to the Isle Of Wight twice. The previous time was to celebrate Dave Goddard’s birthday in 1994 I reckon.
Earlier in the week I had read that both of the UK’s aircraft carriers were alongside in Portsmouth. During the last visit I had definitely seen the control islands of one carrier but hadn’t realised they were both in. So, we booked a harbour tour by boat from the historic dockyard. Things I noticed – entry to the dockyard is free, you just have to ask, it’s the individual “attractions” you pay for. The security search of bags at the entrance was poor because I took my lock-knife in by mistake – I keep it with me along with a torch because – reasons. We got tickets for the harbour tour.
The tour was on a catamaran and it had loads of seating inside the main cabin which was warm. We sat by a window. There were some noisy people on board but I tried to remember that other people do and are allowed to exist. This noisy group wanted tea to drink – I was surprised (but shouldn’t have been) that the first thing they thought of was buying tea. The tour started with HMS Warrior, then left the confines of the quay and passed the two carriers.
The Prince of Wales had a lot of scaffolding on top and was clearly undergoing a serious amount of maintenance. This is what a few billion GBP gets you and it is massive. 280 metres long and it towers above everything else in the local area. It would have been nice to see them from the top of Spinnaker Tower but it was shut for work. The Queen Elizabeth was meant to be departing Portsmouth that evening but during pre-checks they had discovered an issue with one of the propeller drive shaft couplings and so her departure was cancelled. I believe the PoW is being sent instead to scare off the Yemeni “rebels” but it will take about a week for it to be made ready. It could take that long to remove the scaffolding!
Another form of transport over the weekend, assuming transport is to change the location of a person or thing [I understand that a person is a thing], was the lifts in the hotel. They were swift and could apparently take up to eight people. The upper lift capacity figures have always amused me – like they are joking right? It’s purely a weight force limit rather than the number of people you can physically fit into the space. I can tell you that three people was enough, especially when one of them was an over six foot tall boxer. There were university boxing championships going on in the city.
After the harbour trip and after nearly buying a piece of HMS Victory’s wood – because who wouldn’t want a piece of that – we headed to the village of Tangmere about half an hour away. Tangmere is home to a military aviation museum and around six years ago Mr O and I tried to visit there but it was closed for the winter, I think we ended up at Goodwood. So, I had finally made it to Tangmere. It’s quite exciting driving around the corner and seeing the road guarded by an RAF Phantom!
This was a pretty nice little museum. I won’t talk to people but thankfully the Legend does and so I learnt about the RAF Sector Clock along with some interesting stories about pilots and their dashing bravery. There was a good display of aircraft including two actual speed record breakers – A Gloster Meteor and a Hawker Hunter. Also, there were Harriers, a Lightning, a Spitfire, a Lysander and a Sea Vixen. Very nice they all were too and looked after well. Overall, a top weekend.