Taking a ride on a Voskhod hydrofoil
One of the good things about being a student in Holland is that you get a free public transport card. It's not only great for overall student life and mobility, but also for those moments when you have to go somewhere obscure and far away, and not owning a car, would have to pay full fare. It's also great for day trips. In the three years that I've owned my card, I've done some fifty short day trips to every major city, province and corner of Holland. I've been on some strange forms of transport too, like the now defunct Interliner long-distance bus service (the only bus to span the Afsluitdijk in its day), the trolleybuses in Arnhem, many small and obscure train lines in the north, east and south of the country, and even the inimitable TESO ferry to the island of Texel. But nothing beats the Fast Flying Ferry hydrofoil service between Amsterdam and Velsen. That was in October 2003, and naturally I decided to take pictures and make this little write-up for my site.
I never really had the idea to check out the FFF service prior to October 2003, for the simple fact that I didn't really know it existed. I probably knew about it on some level, but it wasn't until the thing crashed twice in one week that I became aware of the complete coolness that is a hydrofoil passenger service.
The first crash was quite severe and occurred to the Voskhod 605 around 13:00 on October 18th 2003, during routine passenger service from Velsen to Amsterdam. According to the fire brigade's meticulous press release, a sudden power failure rendered the vessel unnavigable, causing it to crash into the concrete dock of fertilizer company Amfert at the Fosfaatweg in the Amsterdam harbour. There were seventy people aboard, twenty of whom were injured, and five of those, the captain, the mechanic and three passengers, had to be hospitalized. The vessel was heavily damaged on the front starboard side and temporarily pulled from service.
Later, an official investigation found the captain to be at least partly responsible for the incident.
The second crash is a bit vague, it's not even sure whether it even was a crash. The newspapers noted that "the same thing happened a second time that week", which I'll take as an allusion to another rudder or power failure. I think that if it really was a crash, the media would have played it up much larger. As it was, this second inconsequential incident, together with the original crash, caught the media's attention, they did some background articles and interviewed some of the regular passengers, and dropped the story fairly quickly.
After this week of coverage, you could say that I'd become aware of the existence of a certain hydrofoil passenger service. It intrigued me, not so much because of the supposed unsafety, but because a transport company was actually exploiting Ukranian hydrofoils on a real live passenger service, and I had the credentials to travel it for free. And while taking a ride on a vessel that's just had a week of bad press is maybe not the sanest idea, the experience of boarding a Ukranian hydrofoil from Amsterdam Central station with a group of well-tempered business people, lifting up out of the water, passing all the big container ships on one of Holland's busiest waterways, shooting past the harbours of Amsterdam, and finally ending up in Velsen, which is the epithome of 'the middle of nowhere', was too bizarre to pass up.
As it worked out, I happened to have a Thursday off that week, so on October 23, 2003 I got my camera and took the train to Amsterdam to check things out.
Some factual information. The Voskhod hydrofoils, numbered 604, 605 and 606, are operated under the name Fast Flying Ferries, which is some sort of semi-self-contained daughter company of the Connexxion transport imperium. You couldn't miss the Connexxion connection from the colour scheme of the vessels, which is the same hideous mix of fluorescent and ivy greens they use for their city buses. Maybe they consider hydrofoils to be some sort of bus too, because the ferry service is in the books as regular bus line 419. Only riding a hydrofoil is nothing like boarding a bus.
You get your tickets from a wooden cabin behind Amsterdam central station and wait for the vessel to arrive. If I'm not mistaken, they leave every 30 minutes sharp. The brochure even warns you not to be late, because the ferry won't be, and doesn't wait.
As the vessel nears the dock, it recedes back into the water, navigating towards the dock like a normal boat. Near the dock, the purser steps out of the vessel's aircraft-like door to coordinate the mooring and secure the vessel. Once secured, the purser opens the passenger door and lets out the passengers. Then it's your turn; greeted by the purser, you show your ticket and get into the craft. You go down a few steps and stand in front of the big wood paneled engine room and cockpit staircase. It feels like standing in some sort of ditched vintage aircraft; through the windows you can see water, but the interior is like that of an old commercial airliner. If you take a left to the back of the boat, you'll see the large passenger area with rows of commodity chairs; if you take a right, you pass past the door leading to the cockpit, into the nose of the craft, to the dozen or so chairs behind the panoramic window. This is, of course, where I took a seat. I was lucky to travel outside rush hours and during a historic low week, so I was one of maybe ten or twenty passengers, and securing one of the best seats was easy.