NANTUCKET HAYRIDE

Ever notice how the more interesting and memorable stuff is seldom scripted? Prepare all you can, but whether you're doing it or it's doing you, how the unforeseen gets dealt with is what makes your story. That's why defensive teams win championships, because they react correctly when it counts. It's how commanders win battles too.My first full season as a commercial glider pilot, with 200 hours logged I thought I was a better stick then than I wish I were now, thirty five years later. You hear about the learning curve? Mine was more of a learning spike and has remained so for much of the way since. Even now I'm afraid if I blink I'll slide out of wack like Wile E. Coyote on skates. Teaching myself to soar has been what I imagine a space walk to feel like, except astronauts usually know what they're doing. And learning to teach... well we should all be glad most of that's behind me. Additionally, many of my richest errors in those daze amounted to going along with (and in some cases advancing) other's bad ideas. Not an excuse, just a reason.We were booked to hop rides at a summer festival on Nantuckett, twenty miles out in the Atlantic. The island's one airport was towered so we didn't go there, until later. Our 'strip' would be a golf course fairway aimed east at the ocean. Looking down today from GoogleEarth, we had a thousand feet of open turf uphill to a couple hundred yards of brushy dunes, the beach and the sea. We'd be landing the opposite way, downwind into a milling crowd. Taking off uphill's creepy enough, but landing downhill to a short porch would be complicated by a pulse of lift where the trailing sea breeze rose over those dunes on mid final. Which landing would be most educational, the first or the last? Before all that however, the towplane's engine was brand new and needed slow-timing. If you don't know what that means, ask around. It's serious. Without this process completed the aircraft was unfit for service. Gabe knew of the restraint, but either didn't understand its importance or thought this occasion somehow worth the risk. Otto the tow pilot knew better and said so, but it was Gabe's plane and his call so Otto and I shrugged our shoulders. More flights on someone else's dime was all we were after. By evening the engine would be too crippled to fly back to the mainland, but that's a different story. We towed a 2-32 sixty-five miles into the rising sun from one place I'd never seen to another, a third of that over open water. Otto was new to towing gliders and had very little actual experience by any measure. I had less. He had a radio and I had... less. If any flotation device were aboard the Bird Dog other than a foam seat cushion, the same would be true again. ELT in the glider? Guess. On the way across, my mind drifted to how long a Schweizer might float... Judging from the white noise they make, you may as well start swimming now. The engine was complaining before we got there and Otto did too, soon as his feet touched the ground. (You can bet if he had waved me off half way across I'd have squeezed the stick and some other things, gritted my teeth and dared him to cut me loose!) On the island Otto pulled a few rides, but as the engine began to falter so did his bravery. The poor guy had his eye on an airline career and rightfully feared ruining that with foolishness like this. By midday he'd apologized and quit, a spooked college kid walking away from a tight spot while needing the man he put on that spot to get him back to the mainland and two hundred miles home. That's not cowardice, it's the courage of common sense. But it left only Gabe, whose commercial certificate did not extend to powered airplanes, and me. Gabe had to decide, either call it a day or tow the rest of the day himself. His first taste of dragging me and two potential victims from soft grass over rising ground to the drink before being high enough to turn – in a plane that sounded like it didn't want to run – sobered him. Otto said later that Gabe looked like he'd seen a ghost. But this was his show and more rides were waiting. So now it's midafternoon, hot and humid, each launch consuming more fairway before liftoff. Even I can feel the lack of power, and wish Gabe would embrace the better part of valor and give this up before somebody has to call for help. We've just climbed to about 400 feet, well out beyond the surf, when the Bird Dog... vanishes. A solid deck of sea fog has drifted over, unseen against the haze until we fly into it. Once inside I can see enough light overhead to think we might soon be above it, so stay on tow to learn what the next step should be. Soon we're out the top, but cannot see an edge to the layer. I release and pull spoilers to hurry down while still somewhere near the LZ. Jabbing a quick right in the fog and rolling out before disorientation can set in, I close spoilers the instant the surf reappears. No setting up an approach; we're already on a flat final, about to hit that lift off the dunes. Over my right shoulder I see Gabe behind and closing. The fairway's wide enough for both wingspans and we have the right of way of course, but that means whirling cleavers bearing down on our six! There's a wide stretch on the right where I'd like to land and give Gabe a straight lane, but I'm coming in from the left... Things are happening fast. Rather than confuse him by being less than obvious I bank a sharp little turn across his nose, praying he's further back than he looked, then go full steep and plunk it down before the fairway narrows. As we slow, he trundles by on our left. Those last passengers got an extremely short ride and were glad to settle for that, given the circumstances. So was I. Aftermath? It was 1980 and everyone was quick to move on. We left our aircraft tied to trees for the night, hopefully beyond reach of stray golf balls, and grabbed a mercy flight (IFR) back to the inner 48 so the party could continue at some other venue. Tomorrow would come when it came. Yes those were indeed the days.