Airgator Airboat 09

An airboat photographed from directly astern in the Extended Look, which is the one angle that shows what an airboat actually is: a cage, a propeller and two rudders on a flat-bottomed hull.

The camera is behind the boat and level with it, looking straight into the propeller. A domed wire cage stands at the stern on a frame of vertical ribs, and inside it sits the engine: a dark block with exhaust runs and plumbing wrapped around it, with the propeller hub at its centre. Two flat vertical vanes stand up behind the cage, one either side of the centreline. Those are the air rudders, and they are how an airboat steers.

Forward of the cage the hull is flat and open, decked in a perforated plate that runs to the bow, with low sides and no keel to speak of. The whole boat is a dark olive-grey. It is under way: water is breaking away from both quarters and the greens of the swamp are streaked with motion.

A second sighting in Trailer 2 shows the same boat from the driver's position, running through a wetland of dead trees and grass channels, which is the water this hull is built for.

How to recognise it

• Domed wire propeller cage at the stern on vertical frame ribs
• Engine mounted high inside the cage, exhausts visible
• Two flat vertical air rudders behind the cage
• Flat open deck in perforated plate, low sides
• Dark olive-grey throughout

The frame it comes from

The frame is Extended Look at 17:09.87. It is 1920 by 1080, and the vehicle occupies 460 by 432 of it. Also in it: a wooden lookout tower and a clear swamp spring.

What we still do not know

• What Airboat 09 counts from. Nothing suggests an 01 through 08 yet.
• The raised helm seat. Our note records one; from dead astern it is hidden behind the engine.
• Whether it is restricted to the wetlands or will run in open water
• Everything measured: top speed, handling, price, where it spawns