Field Assessment
The airboat is the vehicle the Grassrivers was designed around. Flat hull, overhead fan engine, and the ability to skim over water too shallow for a conventional boat and terrain too wet for a conventional vehicle. The specific geography of the Leonida wetland system makes the airboat not optional but essential.
In the real Florida Everglades, airboats are the primary transport for both tourists and working inhabitants of the wetland interior. The Leonida Grassrivers maps directly onto this: the channels, the shallow marsh margins, and the areas where the water and the land are the same surface.
The noise of an airboat engine carries in the Grassrivers environment. It is not a quiet vehicle. In a swamp where sound travels across the water surface, the airboat announces itself consistently and at range.