Musings of a "perfect" day

The rain hitting the windshield at 220 KIAS was making an amazing amount of noise. A rogue early winter front had stirred up thunderstorms and tornado watch boxes that slashed across every place we were supposed to go this day. One storm had settled over the Memphis airport closing it to inbound traffic. This was a bit of a concern since Memphis was our stated alternate should the clouds at Tunica be closer to the ground than we were allowed to get on the GPS approach. Normally we would carry enough gas to have an alternate to the alternate but the first stop of the day had been in Caruthersville. That airport is only 4000 feet long. Hauling a bunch of extra Jet A in and out of there, along with 6 passengers, was really not an option. Our little jet's RADAR was painting a solid bit of red just ahead so I turned to ensure that the passengers all had their seat belts tight and had stowed the normal stuff corporate people have out in the back of an airplane, charts, books, computers, etc. It looked like the rest of the ride into Tunica was going to be a bit bumpy. By day's end we would do two GPS approaches in rain and thick clouds, dodge a couple of thunderstorms, shed a little ice, and finish a night ILS approach with a landing on a rain soaked runway in a 15 knot direct cross-wind.

It was a perfect day of flying. I suspect the folks in the back of the airplane had a different opinion of how good a day it was. For them it was a bouncy, loud, somewhat uncomfortable day spent going from place to place in a narrow little tube; a part of their job they simply had to endure. Like most of the people I have worked for, (even one who fired me) they were really glad to have me up front on days when the sun wasn't shining, the wind wasn't calm and the runways weren't very long. They would rather have stayed home but there were people to meet and places to go... Had we taken Nomad instead (and if the route was over water instead of land) it would have taken about 3 days and 16 hours to cover the 491 nautical miles flown that day. (Which is slightly longer than it took the Apollo astronauts to get to the moon. Weird.) A journey that long in Nomad would seem like a major adventure to me. Add in the same kind of rain and wind and I'll bet I would be wondering just what the heck I thought I was doing, going out in such stuff. And yet I know there are sailors in our little marina who would consider such a trip nearly perfect. Some day I hope to be one of them.

Sailor?

I'm not so sure about being a sailor but I am certainly not a complete beginner any longer. As our first season of owning and sailing our little boat comes to a close it is kind of amazing just how much we have learned. Still, we have never been out in weather or low visibility, (Low vis on our lake full of obstructions would get some attention!) and honestly, waves in a lake that is about 20 feet deep at max can't really get very big. No chance of burying the bow or getting "green water" up on the deck. It is fun to not stumble around the rigging trying to figure out what does what. And it was just a few months ago that the sight of Nomad heading to the pump out dock with me at the helm would have boys climbing trees to get a good view, dogs howling and mothers covering the little ones eyes so they wouldn't see the carnage. (Okay, it wasn't quite that bad but it wasn't pretty either.) I don't have to ask how to reef a sail or tighten a forestay whereas not that long ago I didn't know what a "forestay" was.

Flying and motorcycle riding have taught me another thing; just about the time I think I know something a pretty big piece of "humble pie" is about to be served up. Pilots can be a pretty arrogant bunch but only around other people. No pilot is ever arrogant when it comes to the sky. That would be a guaranteed way to get one's ass busted big time. I have noticed a bit of the same with sailors. They do a thing not everybody does and some of them do it a lot better than others of them. But all of them (all of us?) know full well that compared to even a little body of water like Carlyle lake (let alone an ocean) we don't actually amount to much. It takes absolutely no notice of us at all.

I read a bit somewhere once upon a time, "The earth will spin and the sun will rise in the morning, birds will sing and fish will swim, and all of this will happen in spite of the wishes of every tyrant and every king that has ever ruled over men." We are all getting pretty full of the idea that we are about to elect the leader of the free world and set the course of history. Maybe we should all take a deep breath, step back a moment, take a look at the sea or the sky, and remember just who we really are. From 40,000 feet all the feats of mankind actually look pretty small, dwarfed by even the ancient mountains of the east and the scale of the Gulf of Mexico. From just a few miles off shore, certainly no more than 10, land fades from view and we discover that most of the planet is a place we can only visit. This election may be important to us, but it might serve us all to remember that we are not that important. Maybe, if we remembered that, we would treat each other with a bit more kindness, be a little more gentle with our rhetoric, be a little less sure and full of ourselves. That would be a good thing.

New things

It will be a short weekend on the boat, just tomorrow evening and Saturday. I have to be home Saturday night for an early morning get-up-and-go Sunday to do the second half of a contract trip I started today. We took a Citation Ultra to FL, left it and airlined it home. Sunday we do the reverse. (By we I mean myself and Jon who manages the airplane for a family. He uses all contract pilots for now. The Citation is new to him so he wanted to fly with some people who have time in the airplane before he hires on a permanent FO.)

Anyway, the Citation Ultra is a later model of the Citation I fly for the Isle, with bigger engines and a glass cockpit (somewhat like the one in the airliner I flew). It was a chance to try a new thing, fly with a new person, and see a different airplane. Most fun (beside flying with Jon who is a good guy) was being back in a glass cockpit. Details would bore a non-pilot to tears (and be hard to explain) but trust me, there is a huge difference in the old way we did things in the front end of airplanes and the new ways we do them now.

Nomad is old technology (as I've mentioned before). Even for a sailboat she is "traditional" without any of the "good stuff" now around for controlling sails. But it is all still kind of new to me and new things are what keeps life interesting. Not "new things" so much as in stuff you buy. (Though that can be fun too as evidenced by the new motorcycles that show up in my garage once in a while!) Rather new things as in things you experience and things you learn. They stretch the brain a little, work different muscles, make for different thoughts, shed a new light on something. Try the new thing in an environment that may be a bit of a challenge, like an airplane nose deep in the clouds doing 400 mph (Now where was that button for setting a new altitude?) or a boat banging through building waves (How was it I slow this thing down?) and there is a new emphasis on getting it right. 

For example, I have always thought of myself as an independent sort of person. (I know, all us left wingers are supposed to be socialists and expect someone else to take care of us. But that's a whole different discussion for some other kind of blog.) But when I start thinking about living on a sailboat and (perhaps) doing some blue water cruising well, that is independence on a completely new plane. The "new thing" of learning some "old technology" has forced a new perspective on ideas like independence, responsibility, self reliance and being competent. All of us have a perspective that is a mix of what we are and experience; pilot, parent, (grandparent!) believer, (or not), conservative, Libertarian, fisherman, motorcycle rider, musician, writer, mountain climber... a mix that makes each of us a little different from all the others. Different even while we share some pretty basic things. (Like human and US citizen.) The trick (maybe) is to not let perspectives set like concrete. To stir them around a little once in a while, look at what we think we know from some other angle. To learn a new thing.

Skipper Lite

adj. Slang Having less substance or weight or fewer calories than something else: "lite music, shimmering on the surface and squishy soft at the core" (Mother Jones).

Someone should look into the mysterious law of physics that accounts for the fact that, any desk, anywhere, left unattended for more than 60 seconds, will attract pieces of paper at a rate that seems to defy the 2ed law of thermodynamics. I was away from one of my desks for a couple of days of flying people around so, sure enough, I had to spend today sorting, reading, initialing and forwarding various bits to various places. (Some only had to go as far as the wastebasket at my feet. I expect to get an edict someday requiring me to initial those ones as well, just to verify that I have the authority to give me permission to throw them away.)

Anyway, (and to get to the title of this little piece) during the day I had a short conversation with my boss. He is pretty high up in our organization with a desk full of real problems to deal with. Like many who work at that stratospheric level his problems seem to grow more complex and intractable with each passing day. As it turns out one of my problems, trying to keep the airplane in the sky while finishing up what has grown into the avionics refit from hell, had intersected with one of his problems, just trying to keep the airplane. He assured me that he had prevailed and that I need not update my resume. (Don’t tell anyone, but like every pilot I know my resume is always up to date.) But now would not be a good time for another extended visit to the shop.

So it came to pass that as I was riding home this afternoon (the long way around, explanation in a moment) I was mulling over the realization once again that there are people completely unknown to me and without a care of me at all, who making decisions that could have a direct and immediate impact on my very next day, or even what remains of this one. It was a stark reminder that I am just “Skipper Lite” when it comes to my own life. The reminder was reinforced when I got to the Rt 170 South on ramp...which was blocked by police cars and flashing lights. It seems someone judged important by someone else was going to some kind of debate at Wash U to be held later this evening. This person’s need to move down the road superseded that of hundreds of others judged much less important. (Really, I know about the VP debate but I am ignoring this latest orgy of election showmanship as much as possible. And that is all I intend to say about politics on this blog!)

I know there are conflicting and overwhelming forces that constrain and set the limits on all of our lives…but I hate being “Skipper Lite.” I hate the idea that the rub line of my day is drawn at the whim of others, that I can helm only a few degrees off the wind or up. Someone else can throw the anchor anytime they like bringing me to a dead stop in the water, or punch a hole in the hull and have me scrambling for a safe harbor where none show on the charts.

As I have said before that is one of the things I love about being in the sky. With the wheels in the wells, the air passing by a 500 + mph, 8 miles high in a sky full of weather, the Pilot in Command is just that. The outcome of the flight depends almost entirely on his or her decisions, skills and insights. The beauty of high altitude flight, the storms and the stars and the sunsets and the clouds; the new places and the perfect landings; the elation of the rush down the runway for the day’s initial departure and the magic of that very first foot of altitude; as wonderful as it all is, it turns out these are not the things that draw me back to the cockpit time after time.

And so I have discovered the lure of living on a boat. It isn’t just the beauty of the water, the rush of the wind in the sails, the sound of the rigging, the new places to see and the new things to learn. It turns out sails really are like wings. When each is filled with the wind “Skipper Lite” is forced to stay behind. Once the land recedes (below or behind it does not matter) then a person can be responsible for the journey. The directions ours to figure out, the starts and stops ours to chose.

For some maybe, none of this matters at all. Maybe for most. For others it is all that matters. I guess I am one of the "others."

World views

I spent most of last week in the world I know best, moving the jet around the country, dodging storms, balancing loads and fuel and possible “plans B” to get people where they needed to be when they needed to be there. We touched wheels in Boca Raton, (two times) St. Louis, (seven times) Moline, (five times) and Naples, FL once. (I need to spend some time in Naples some day. It looks like they have a lot of sailboats there!) Friday I went by the house just long enough to pack some clothes, meet Deb, and head for the marina. Before calling it a night I put a new impeller in Nomad’s cooling system and then crawled into the V-berth thinking to myself, “It sure is good to be home.”

That is a bit of a stretch. Nomad is more like a cabin get-away that will move. And though the water is far from a place I know very well yet, it feels like we are making progress. We are getting much better at sail handling and (so long as the wind isn’t blowing too hard) our boat handling around the marina isn’t near the circus it was just a couple of weekends ago. Boat systems are starting to make a little sense though I have to admit that the water in the bilge thing still bugs me a little. (It just doesn’t seem right to have lake water in the boat even though I know the stuffing box needs to leak a little for cooling.) Things are finding their place in the cabin. I know where to find my shoes and hat and glasses. I can move around in the middle of the night and not bang into things any more often then I do in the bedroom. Nomad is not the strange place it seemed just a month or so ago.

Saturday a bunch of boats from the marina all sailed to a cove about 4 miles away for a “raft-up” and a party. Well, we didn’t really sail. Most of us tried but there was just no wind. Boats would power out onto the lake, hoist sails, drift for a while, drop the sails and start up the motor. It was kind of comical seeing a whole flotilla of sticks moving across the lake, all homing in on the same spot. By late afternoon about half the boats, (Nomad included) left for home. The other half stayed out for the night. Breaking up the raft was a bit exciting and, in spite of my improved boat handling skills, I still managed to spook the folks watching. I think I knew what I was doing. I managed to miss the remaining boats, (in spite of a wind that was pushing my stern into them) and had a plan for missing the anchor rode that had gotten under our bow (which I did). From some of the (rather loud) advice I got while pulling away though, I’m not sure the captains that were watching were convinced I knew what I was doing.

In spite of my being a newbie I’m beginning to suspect that, unlike the world I do know, in the world of sailing anarchy reigns and everyone is an expert even if no two of them can agree. One person swears by a preventer (rigging the keeps the boom from swinging, particularly when running downwind). Another claims a preventer is an unnecessary complication. Boom vang, rigid or rope, yeah or nay, topping lifts, spinnakers or genikers, reefing systems, geniker poles, proper ways to tie the boat to the dock, 2 hulls or 1 or 3, instrumentation…it seems that every piece of a sailboat, every maneuver a sailboat might make, every sail set, every wind condition, is open to endless debate. On the one hand that seems kind of fun. But on the other, some things have to work better than other things that don’t work so well. Surely somewhere in the world of sailing there is a way of learning what those things are without making all of the mistakes for one’s self?