My travels took me yesterday to the banks of the Mersey Estuary, its only traffic a pair of small craft circumnavigating a far-distant sandbank. They may or may not have been hovercraft, the nearest RNLI station known to operate at least one in the circs. The fire-service at Liverpool's airport appear not to employ one, though they did at Heathrow in view of the fact that you might come down in the reservoir at the end of its westerly runways.
But if you were going to deploy a drone hereabouts you would want a boat that may fly at least a short distance, and subsequently be able to unload its skids in order to plane with as light a tread as possible, if not skim the surface with clear air beneath.
For instance there's a drop of some ten feet from the quay here to the mud-flats, a place you don't want particularly to travel on even in shallow water: it conceals any number of obstacles like discarded scaffolding tubes that would hole a hull. A boat with lift- and cruise-motors could launch from land here and down to the mud-flats, where it could travel in ground-effect before entry into the water to plane or troll: a combined operation of helicopter, hovercraft and boat.
It has to happen, really, in one form or another but if you look at the introduction of anything new it invariably follows from the action of one (or two) individuals that fly literally in the face of scepticism or ridicule... whether it be search (Google), social media (Facebook), flight (Wright Bros), space (-X), reciprocating engines (Watt, Diesel) or automobiles (Mr and Mrs Benz).
And I've a horrible feeling that when it comes to the go-anywhere boat it may fall to me and ~ as I told every employer ~ I'm the last person you'd want to rely on.
The inset shows (lock-gates intact) that the quay here was once a dock, this being near the original crossing-point established by local monks with a ferry. I wondered if the people digging it thought: Fuck, it'll be filled-in eventually anyway?
