Andrew Heighway first fell in love with the sleek lines of Sydney's hydrofoils when, as a boy, his family moved to Manly in 1982. He was transfixed watching their aluminium hulls rise on their foils like giant sea serpents, making the trip across Sydney Harbour from Manly to Circular Quay in close to 12 minutes. He relished the feel of the sea spray on his face and the wind in his hair, when the passenger seats tilted back as the ferry master pulled on the throttle to accelerate it to speeds of up to 60km/h.

The Curl Curl hydrofoil in Manly in the 1980s.

When Heighway, the son of a British Airways pilot, returned with his family to Britain in 1988, he took with him a rusty remnant of one of the three hydrofoils scrapped that year at Homebush Bay, and some video of his final trip on the Curl Curl, which he recorded on his bulky camcorder. When the Curl Curl was taken out of service in 1991, the last of the eight that had plied Sydney Harbour since 1965, he developed a desire to discover its fate. And that of the other seven old Sydney fixtures.

He knew the Curl Curl had been shipped back to Italy where it had been built, via the cargo ship Regina in 1992, with three other hydrofoils: the Long Reef, Manly II and Sydney. There they were refurbished to transport passengers to the Aeolian Islands in the Mediterranean. But nothing more.

Now, 30 years since he left Sydney, the British businessman, who sold his successful company Heighway Pinball last year, is embarking on a new enterprise, to bring the last remaining Sydney hydrofoil around the world on its foils - back to Sydney Harbour.