An amphibious bus will start operating in Cape Town next month. (Supplied/The Waterfront Duck Co.).

• An amphibious vehicle tour will start operating from Cape Town next week.
• The passenger bus will transform into a boat mid-journey.
• The concept will be a first for South Africa, but has been implemented in a host of International cities.
• For more financial news, go to the News24 Business front page.

In a first for South Africa, an amphibious passenger vehicle, which will transform from a bus to a boat mid-journey, will start operating in Cape Town next month.

Keith Lindsay, the founder of The Waterfront Duck, said the company was clearing the last of the regulatory hurdles needed to make the part-land part-sea tour a reality.

Lindsay, who worked in the marketing and advertising industry for most of his career, said he first had the idea to launch an amphibious bus tour in Cape Town in 2008 after trying an amphibious vehicle tour in Boston.

“We loved that idea, but I had to wait until circumstance allowed me to make it happen,” he said.

Amphibious passenger vehicles, now commonly known as “ducks”, originated in World War 2 when the US Army and Marine Corps produced vehicles that worked as boats and land vehicles called DUKWs, which were used to ferry ammunition and supplies from ships to supply dumps on beaches. After the war, some of these vehicles were used in waterside cities for tourism purposes.

A host of cities across the world offer duck tours, including Boston, Singapore, Stockholm, and Salzburg.

Lindsay said that he stepped back from the marketing industry once he turned 60 and has been working on the project to offer duck tours in Cape Town for around four years.

Keith Lindsay has been working on the Waterfront Duck for around four years. (Supplied/ The Waterfront Duck Co.).

He said the company bought the vessel that they will be using from a manufacturer in England and that it was the most expensive version possible, but the one he deemed to be the safest. Lindsay said that Waterfront Duck has placed a deposit on a second vehicle expected to arrive early next year, and will increase the size of its fleet as needed from there.

“It has got a massive amount of safety features which you find in all modern tourist vessels,” said Lindsay.

The next challenge was to secure regulatory approval, which proved to be a challenge.

“There is no such thing as amphibious legislation, really. It has to have qualifications in dual streams. One is water and the other is road,” he said.

“We started with the water side. We thought that would be the most tricky. It turns out they were both tricky,” said Lindsay.

The vehicle will head down a jetty at the Waterfront and turn from bus to boat. (Supplied/The Waterfront Duck Co.).

After a long wait and lots of paperwork, the licence for use of the vehicle on the water was awarded by the South African Maritime Safety Authority, and the National Regulator for Compulsory Standards awarded a licence for the vehicle to operate on the road.

He said that they were now going through the traffic department to complete the road certification process. 

“We think there are about two to three weeks of regulatory process that we need to go through.” 

He said that the drivers of the vehicle, known as “quacktains”, need to have a PDP licence for the road and a skipper’s licence for the water.

The official launch date for the amphibious passenger tours is 31 July, although Lindsay said that the company might start with a soft launch before that, regulatory approval permitting.

All aboard!

The roughly one-hour-long tour will be split between land and sea.

The first third of the tour will snake through Greenpoint along the Atlantic Seaboard. A so-called “conducktor” will be on board to provide information about the city.

Upon arriving back at the V&A the bus heads down a jetty and into the marina to become a boat. The boat won’t leave the safety of the harbour walls and the tour guide will share information about the marine environment.

Roughly two-thirds of the amphibious vehicle tours will be spent on the water. (Supplied/The Waterfront Duck Co.).

“Fifty percent of the attraction of this trip is that this is a bus that floats, the other 50% is based on this concept of edutainment,” said Lindsay.

“If there is anything to see like sunfish or dolphins or anything like that, we will idle for a little bit and take a look,” he said.

Andre Blaine, the Waterfront executive for marine and industrial, welcomed the initiative and said that the concept is novel and exciting.

“It is a great new offering to the visitor experiences we have at the Waterfront and is going to provide users with a water and land experience promoting not only the harbour but the central city,” he said. 

Lindsay hopes that the tour will become an iconic to-do activity in the city.

“We are confident that is going to be a permanent part of the Cape Town landscape,” he said.