This Alberta teacher spent 1,800 hours over a year building a homemade hovercraft from scratch.

A small town Alberta teacher hope that his hard work and dedication to build a hovercraft entirely from scratch, he inspires in his students that they can do anything if they put their mind to it.

“There are no limits to anything you want to do in life and if you put enough energy into it, you will succeed,” said Robert Tymofichuk.

Tymofichuk has been a teacher for 35 years. He teaches math, science and business at New Myrnam School in Myrnam, Alberta, a village of about 300 people east of Edmonton.

A self-described tinkerer, Tymofichuk was interested in homemade inventions from a young age; At that time, there wasn’t much to watch on television, he said.

One year, in late fall, he saw a hovercraft take off at a lake and from that moment he was inspired.

“There was a layer of ice right at the edge of the lake. The person started it and basically took off from the land and it went through this ice to the water and there was barely any wave. At that point, I was hooked,” Tymofichuk said in a recent interview with Global News.

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“It was one of those things where you wanted to get a hovercraft, but you don’t exactly go to the local powersports dealership and say, ‘I’d like to buy a hovercraft.'”

When Tymofichuk was younger, he worked with his father to build a hovercraft, but after five years of work, the machine failed to take off. Recently, he tried again and spent about 1,800 hours in a year building a homemade hovercraft.

“Every waking moment outside of school was dedicated to this job. There were evenings, there were weekends,” he said, adding that his wife helped him with some elements of the craft along the way.

“It became a fever where, when you saw the ship coming together, it made it harder for me to continue.”

Piece by piece, little by little, Tymofichuk carefully handcrafted each element of the craftby collecting parts from car salvage lots and local mechanic shops.

The hovercraft cabin is from a 1997 Jeep Cherokee. The steering control was originally papier mache molded in Tymofichuk’s hands. It was then covered with fiberglass and filled with foam. The hovercraft is capable of going from solid ground to ice, snow and water.

“Every piece that went into it was built uniquely, because you don’t go to a hardware store and say, ‘I’d like this and I’d like that,’” Tymofichuk said.

“It was built part by part and anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it.”

Tymofichuk hopes his students will be inspired by his dedication.

“If they have a dream, it’s just a matter of intermediate work to make it come true. That’s the main thing.

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