928 Vs. Jaguar XKR
01-25-2006, 08:25 PM
#31
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Originally Posted by Les White
...This one involved (your dad) actively making several bad decisions...No sailor would ever make those mistakes.
Sad but true Fabric. The sad part is that he was a carreer Navy man, aviator type, but yes, he should have known way better. We did go out with another boat for safety purposes but we stopped on the way in to troll a weed line and they kept on going in. That's when the prop sheared off. His budy, also a Naval aviator, never thought to check up on us until my Mom called him that night asking about us. By then it was too late and the Coast Guard wasn't going to launch a search into the storm.
We got very lucky. It was dark, foggy, and rough the next morning. My Dad and I were lying in the bottom of the boat, sharing a dirty bath towell for cover, shivering our asses off. I was sleeping. Suddenly he just got up and saw that sail boat cruising by. They didn't see the first flare so he shot one right accross their bow.
They transferred us to the Coast Guard at the mouth of the bay. The Coasties weren't too impressed with my Dad's big adventure either. They towed us the rest of the way in then gave him a ticket for not having life preservers on board.
Les
Sad but true Fabric. The sad part is that he was a carreer Navy man, aviator type, but yes, he should have known way better. We did go out with another boat for safety purposes but we stopped on the way in to troll a weed line and they kept on going in. That's when the prop sheared off. His budy, also a Naval aviator, never thought to check up on us until my Mom called him that night asking about us. By then it was too late and the Coast Guard wasn't going to launch a search into the storm.
We got very lucky. It was dark, foggy, and rough the next morning. My Dad and I were lying in the bottom of the boat, sharing a dirty bath towell for cover, shivering our asses off. I was sleeping. Suddenly he just got up and saw that sail boat cruising by. They didn't see the first flare so he shot one right accross their bow.
They transferred us to the Coast Guard at the mouth of the bay. The Coasties weren't too impressed with my Dad's big adventure either. They towed us the rest of the way in then gave him a ticket for not having life preservers on board.
Les
01-28-2006, 10:51 AM
#33
Track Day
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...Wow, somebody is really watching over your shoulder....
I think I might have got my Dad's guardian angel when he passed away.
In the early 70's he survived a double engine failure during a cross country flight from Norflolk, Virginia to San Diego in a Grumman S-2 Tracker which was a twin radial engined antisubmarine airplane. It was a worn out plane being sent to SD for a complete overhaul. He made it as far as New Mexico where the left engine failed. Unfortunately he was in the mountains in the middle of nowhere with no place to go. The Tracker is loaded with ASW gear and therefore very heavy and won’t maintain altitude on one engine so all he could do was go to WOT on the right and look for the best place to crash land or bail out.
Luckily he spotted a small gravel air strip in a mountain valley, probably used by mountain goat hunters. He was descending to the air strip when the right engine blew an oil line. With fading oil pressure it didn’t last long. The engine finally siezed up on final approach. Fortunately he was set up on a steep approach and was able to make the air strip, dead stick. Touched down with no damage, except maybe his shorts. He never said.
Normally the Navy would bring in a maintenance team, fix it, and fly it out but the air strip was too short for a take off. At the time the Navy didn’t have a big enough chopper to lift it out so they ended up calling upon the Arizona Army National Guard to come in and lift it out with one of their CH-54 Sky Cranes.
If there is such a thing as a guardian angel, I would give this one a good reccomendation, if asked.
Les
I think I might have got my Dad's guardian angel when he passed away.
In the early 70's he survived a double engine failure during a cross country flight from Norflolk, Virginia to San Diego in a Grumman S-2 Tracker which was a twin radial engined antisubmarine airplane. It was a worn out plane being sent to SD for a complete overhaul. He made it as far as New Mexico where the left engine failed. Unfortunately he was in the mountains in the middle of nowhere with no place to go. The Tracker is loaded with ASW gear and therefore very heavy and won’t maintain altitude on one engine so all he could do was go to WOT on the right and look for the best place to crash land or bail out.
Luckily he spotted a small gravel air strip in a mountain valley, probably used by mountain goat hunters. He was descending to the air strip when the right engine blew an oil line. With fading oil pressure it didn’t last long. The engine finally siezed up on final approach. Fortunately he was set up on a steep approach and was able to make the air strip, dead stick. Touched down with no damage, except maybe his shorts. He never said.
Normally the Navy would bring in a maintenance team, fix it, and fly it out but the air strip was too short for a take off. At the time the Navy didn’t have a big enough chopper to lift it out so they ended up calling upon the Arizona Army National Guard to come in and lift it out with one of their CH-54 Sky Cranes.
If there is such a thing as a guardian angel, I would give this one a good reccomendation, if asked.
Les
