The Roar of Airboats on the Mighty Congo...Maybe...
By Ken Wells
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
29 March 1993
BRAZZAVILLE, Congo -- If the Congo River becomes an airboat freeway -- and it could -- you can thank Pierre Eon, Gentle Ben and Reggie Causey.
Mr. Eon, a French entrepreneur, explains: Watching French TV as a youngster, he stumbled upon an episode of "Gentle Ben," a corny American show about a pet bear loping about the Everglades, shadowed by friendly folk in an airboat. The bear made no impression, but the boat did. "Such a wonderful machine. I knew I would one day build one," says Mr. Eon.
Perhaps the irony of a Frenchman falling in love with a contraption designed to carry American frog hunters into the deep swamp was too much. He grew up, went to law school, practiced law. Long, airboatless years passed.
But in 1989, Mr. Eon rekindled his dream. To zip around the wetlands near his French hometown of Nantes, he built himself a small airboat -- a flat-bottomed craft that scoots along in just an inch or two of water, pushed by an airplane engine and propeller mounted on the stern.
Hooked, he started an airboat company. Then last year he got serious. He made a pilgrimage to the Everglades, the watery womb of airboating, and tracked down Mr. Causey, a twang-talking airboat wizard and supplier of airboat engines. Using Mr. Causey's engines, he built the King Kong of airboats -- a 55-foot, eight-ton, 40-passenger behemoth. Now, here it sits, on the mighty Congo.
If it does what it is supposed to do -- run at high speeds undeterred by sandbars, crocodile-infested mudflats and even marshy hippo haunts -- the boat could revolutionize transport on the 2,900-mile-long Congo. Forget lazy steamers struggling for two weeks to ports upstream; airboats could cut the journey to a day or two and go where no steamer has gone before.
"I can see 50 airboats here one day, maybe 100," says Mr. Eon.
It is possible, seeing as how the two regular Congo riverboats, run by the bankrupt government of Zaire, haven't run at all in five months. But whether anyone sees this as a chance to invest in an airboat fleet is uncertain. This boat has been bought -- assuming a successful shakedown cruise -- by a quasi-public Congolese-French company called Gas Congo, formed by a retired French oil worker with Congo connections. It paid about $550,000, including shipping, and will use the boat for purposes no one is eager to explain. But the Congolese government is broke, and Zaire, across the river, is not only broke but on the brink of anarchy.
Such conjectural matters are premature for, at the moment, the world's largest airboat has yet to prove its Congo mettle. It has been tied up at a shabby Congolese government dock awaiting a few essentials, like another engine. And fuel.
The extra engine is necessary because, in a brief test voyage, the two 454-cubic-inch engines that drive the boat's stern-mounted airplane propellers proved inadequate to push the boat more than about 15 miles per hour. That is short of the 45 mph prophesied, and too slow to hop over sandbars.
As for fuel, the world's biggest airboat requires high-octane gasoline, and its test voyage seems to have burned up the Congo's entire supply. Everything in this desultory nation of 2 1/2 million seems to run on regular, if at all. The Congolese government, apparently on orders from on high, has sent its minions out searching for premium. But the quest for high-test has thus far produced low rewards.
The thirtysomething Mr. Eon acknowledges these and other problems as he takes a visitor on a tour of his aluminum-hulled monster. It is a day of stupendous heat, when sweat cascades from every pore and even Mr. Eon's modish crew cut has given up and fallen over, plastered to his head. The airboat has no windows and no air conditioning. Mr. Eon makes sawing motions to indicate the solution to this problem: Windows will be cut into the Plexiglas cabin.
When? Mr. Eon shrugs. "Soon."
Nothing can happen soon enough for Mr. Causey, co-owner of Diamondback Airboats, Cocoa, Fla. One evening, in the downstairs bar of the Hotel M'Bamou Palace, Mr. Causey is still trying to figure out how he got talked into coming here. His idea of adventure is a long weekend at the Miami boat show trying to sell a few of his own airboats. His company cranks out 50 to 100 of them a year, mostly for frog hunters and swamp stompers. He has never before set foot outside the U.S.
Now, he sits with Mr. Eon and a gaggle of French technicians drinking big green bottles of Ngok, Congo's answer to Budweiser, and feeling left out. The French crew speaks little English, and Mr. Causey has just learned his first French word, "bonjour." He is working on "monsieur."
The language barrier makes things tricky. As supplier of the airboat's engines, Mr. Causey is responsible for strapping on the third engine. He needs now and then to communicate. "They told me I'd have an interpreter and a body guard," he says. "I ain't seen either one."
Mr. Causey has been in the French-speaking Congo for about a week. The third engine has been air-freighted from the U.S. but seems to be lost in transit, along with other vital parts. He can't get the phones to work, and when he does he can't speak to the people on the other end. Everything on every menu is in French and unrecognizable. He has lost 10 pounds; he is dying for some cheese sticks.
Overjoyed to find another English speaker, Mr. Causey relates the twisting tale of the boat. A year ago, Mr. Eon sent two French students on a Florida airboat-engine search. They found Mr. Causey in the Yellow Pages and knocked on his door. Later, Mr. Eon went to Florida, with an interpreter. French engines, it turns out, are entirely too wimpy to power the world's largest airboat. A deal was struck. Mr. Causey was under the impression he had sold about 40 engines, but it turned out to be just a couple. Before he knew it, he had his first-ever passport and a plane ticket to the Congo.
Eventually, the lost engine turns up at the Brazzaville airport, though a truck to tow it to the docks is still missing. Mr. Eon decides on direct action, paying a visit to Congo President Pascal Lissouba. The president's connection to the airboat is foggy, but high-octane gasoline miraculously seems to have been found. Before long, Mr. Causey finds himself actually doing something in the Congo: bolting on the final engine. He works through the night. At dawn, the engines are fired up and the world's largest airboat rockets up onto a glide and goes skimming along the shallow western banks of the Congo River. Shirtless men in ancient dugout canoes gaze in wonder.
Then they drop their paddles and slap their hands over their ears.
The world's largest airboat may also be the world's noisiest; with a fleet of them, the placid Congo would sound more like Kennedy Airport.
But Mr. Eon is thrilled; the boat travels at better than 30 mph and blasts right over a sandbar that snags the Brazzaville ferry each day. Mr. Causey also is thrilled. He gets on a plane and leaves the Congo.
But maybe not forever. By phone from Florida, it is clear Mr. Causey has caught Congo airboat fever. "Over 10 years, I see 500 boats there," he says. As for current orders: "None."