It's been a while, but SOP for shipboard approaches was to come to the hover adjacent to the spot on the port side, then transition across, hover over the spot, then land. Standard for both small ships and carriers, this gave a hover power check prior to moving sideways over the deck.
USN SOPS were/are quite different, with a straight in approach over the back end of the boat. They also differ in their Planeguard ops: RN would hover off the port quarter for recoveries, and alongside the cat for launches, where they would also check over the stovie prior to launch. USN put their planeguard (helo) in an orbit off the starboard quarter for launch and recoveries. Returning RN helos would also sit in the port wait outboard of the planeguard during FW ops, prior to recovery. Ark Royal became the exception to this when 6 spot was relocated to the extension aft of the island, and it became more convenient to put us in the starboard wait (still a hover, Flyco couldn't abide helicopters orbiting
) sucking in stackgas for 15 - 30 minutes.
Not too sure what current policy is with TDC's now that the Shar is in the equation, although I vaguely recall seeing them follow a similar pattern to the helicopters.