In calm, slow corners, the craft drifts over the water, its 35-horsepower engine pushing out a small wake behind. Sitting in the driver’s seat, adrenaline spikes come from pulling 360-degree spins, spinning balletic over the water in perfect circular pirouettes. After firing up the engine he let the machine warm up, then turned up the throttle the bags filled with air, and he took the craft out for a spin.ĭownwind, the Renegade IQ can reach up to 50 mph, but for most of this journey, it cruised around the 15-30 mph range. We met at a still, freshwater lake just north of the city, and he and a partner carried the Renegade off a trailer (at a claimed weight of 355 pounds, it’s easily lifted) and dropped it on shore. He’d just left the bougie Miami Boat Show, and later that day was heading to meet with Chilean miners, recent buyers of hovercraft who intend to traverse lakes that gather in the mines.

As odd amphibians, hovercraft live on two ends of the market spectrum: toys for the yachting-type looking to joyride from Mediterranean anchor to shore, and survival vehicles for rescue crews, who need a vehicle that can handle river currents (which hovercraft float over), operate on thin lake ice, and handle any other chore neither a dedicated land-based or water-based machine can withstand.Ī Rockford, Illinois company has a corner on this small market, and I met with a representative from Renegade Hovercraft outside of Miami to give the Renegade IQ a test drive. The machines in toto float in a blurry space between rigidly utilitarian and completely frivolous, passing between hard definitions as easily as they pass from land to water. Thing is, there’s no real purpose to a civilian hovercraft. How Dirk came by this hovercraft or what purpose it served was a mystery masked in this intrigue, the thought of hovercraft stuck around in my mind long after Dirk sunsetted his Sunday runs. He’d float by a few times, pulling tranced neighborhood kids like a pied piper with a gigantic fan. The machine would lift off the ground, then Dirk would shoot down the asphalt, doing 360 spins and causing a whir across the manicured lawns. Sunday mornings, Dirk Vanderbilt would open up his third car garage door, roll out a trailer, offload a hovercraft, turn on the engine. On the suburban street where I grew up, every few weeks a levitating monster lurked over the black asphalt, blowing up a small tornado and calling alarm to all the neighborhood dogs.

Used military hovercraft for sale