Back in the Box

Done with the sim observation week, and it went a bit better than pretty well. I started this with a tendency to look at Sim instruction as just one of those things one had to put up with for the chance to get back into a classroom setting. All of the hours spent in the front seats of Sims over the years had dulled any enthusiasm for working in the box. These last few days have eased that feeling somewhat. The Sim is a unique training environment; a multi-million dollar, full-motion chalkboard used to study and master some pretty complex challenges. At the start of the week the crew I was with was tentatively poking at switches just to get the flight deck powered up and the engines running. Today nothing—not badly degraded flight controls, one engine gone, or 3 of their 4 instrument screens dead in the panel—kept them from flying near perfect night instrument approaches to absolute minimums, usually ending with a gentle touchdown and the airplane coming to a stop with the nose gear on the center line. This is training the way training ought to be, and is pretty close to as much fun as a person can have while, at the same time, just working for a living. (No, we didn’t do any single-engine dump truck jumping. It turns out I’m not the only one who thinks such things are a waste of training time.) Meeting with them after their successful check rides was cool, and they were even kind enough to say that what little input I offered over our week together in the sim was helpful.

Photo courtesy of aopa.com

My next task is to “teach” the Initial Pilot sim sessions to two Flight Safety Instructors pretending to be clients, while a third Instructor teaches me the simulator ropes. And that has led to one of the cooler things that has happened to me lately. (Though the idea of four Flight Instructors in the same Sim provokes images of four doctors in a Bonanza. Its an insider joke, don't worry if you don't get it.)

Years ago, I had a chance to teach a class on high altitude/turbine flight operations at St. Louis University, something that lasted nearly eight years. After that job faded away, there was some time spent as an Airline Captain. Fun job, but the pay was hard to live on. (Regional pilot pay back in those days was another inside joke.) I left that job to fly a corporate jet around the country for about a decade and, when the ax fell on that gig, Deb and I headed out on Kintala.

Now, something near 20 years later, one of the pilots I will be practicing on will be someone who sat in one of those classes at St. Louis University. He is a fully qualified Sim and ground school instructor for the Legacy, and it is likely he will have much of value to share about teaching others to fly this thing.

I have stumbled across several students from those SLU days: a young lady flying Apache Helicopters for the Army, several who are now wearing 4 stripes and flogging airlines around the world, one who flies B2 stealth bombers…I don’t claim to have had anything at all to do with their success, though it was kind of fun that such meetings always included smiles, laughter, and good stories. But to be working with one of them, having him show me the way around this high-tech wonder jet? That’s enough to make an old flight instructor feel pretty good about the paths life has taken; enough to have me truly looking forward to being “back in the box.”

The way it is.

Slowly, and somewhat against my will, the integration back into the world of land dwellers continues. I am starting to drive a little faster. The highway part of the route to and from the shop works best when big parts of it get done in the left lane. Two of the off ramps used are left exits, with one of those dumping me off into the left lane of another highway. From there it is about 1/2 mile to get across four lanes of traffic to a right exit. When in the left lane, it seems best to try and keep up, but ten over is about as fast as I care to go. It’s usually enough, particularly when the schedule has me making the trip around rush hour. Non-rush hour traffic is light enough that leaving the lane switch to the last minute isn’t a problem. On those days,speeds in the fast lane run 20/25 over…and more. Best to leave that bit of concrete to those in a real hurry to get to their next accident.

The drive through town to the highway has its own displays of land dweller foolishness. I don’t understand those who just blow through red lights without even slowing, something witnessed on an average of once a day. I can’t get my head around the idea of someone thinking that they are so important that traffic laws simply don’t apply to them. I sometime wonder if they think the laws of reaction times, momentum, braking traction, and impact “g” forces, don’t apply to them either. Then again, thinking isn’t likely one of their strong suits. Such drivers are, admittedly, a minority. Maybe Darwin keeps them from multiplying too rapidly.

Unsurprisingly, the job is helping ease the transition. In the aviation world, the people not big on thinking don’t get very far or last very long. (Darwin rules again.) Being among the tribe of hard-core, professional aviators helps take some of the sting out of not being among the tribe of cruisers. The job, now, is to sit through the exact same class/cockpit trainer/sim sessions as completed barely a week ago. Observing is the task at hand, concentrating more on how the material is taught rather than what is being taught. There is still a lot of learning going on. Knowing enough to pass the check rides and exams is not near to knowing enough to teach.

Mike, the instructor this past week, is the fourth I have worked with since hiring on. The first three got me – six years away from a flight deck – past an FAA type ride in the Legacy fly-by-wire-gee-whiz wonder bird, in three weeks. A pretty good demonstration of just how good they are at what they do. Watching Mike, with an eye toward working the classroom gee-whiz wonders and watching how he interacts with the group did (as I fully expected) highlight just how challenging – and fun – this is going to be. And there are still two areas of instruction, the cockpit trainer and the actual simulator, to be mastered.

Another help in taking the sting away from being off the boat comes from spending time with the pilots being trained. The current class includes pilots from Mexico, France, Germany (who was born in Brazil), and the US. One of the American pilots was a contract guy who has flown pretty much everywhere there is to fly, including Russia and China. This group of seven pilots is, collectively, fluent in at least 6 languages. They are very much the kind of people we routinely met while traveling on Kintala: adventuresome, capable, friendly, smart, and at ease with other cultures and ideas. It is just flat-out fun to be around them, listen to their stories, and work with them as they get a handle on this new bird.

It all helps.

The crew of Blown’ In the Wind is spending a few days on the dock where Kintala is sitting with the broker. They say it is strange to see her there without Deb and I nearby. It is even stranger having them “out there” while heading off to work each day. I try not to think of it too often; the job, Daughters (Two), and the grandkid gang of 7 are all good reasons to have taken this path. But sometimes the nights pass slow, with the lights of the city and the noise of the adjoining apartments rubbing raw against the nights of silence and darkness riding to the anchor off some uninhabited cay. At other times a thought or memory will sneak up and freeze my world for just a moment, right in the middle of the day. Those usually pass quickly, though the ghost of a hurt may linger for a while. Some of the people I love, and a world I miss, are very far away. And that’s just the way it is going to be for a while.

Just another ride?

One thing that seemed a pretty sure bet when we left land and moved onto a boat, was that there would be no more check rides in the future, let alone two check rides in five days. It would have been a bad bet to take.

Photo courtesy of AOPA.com

The first was Monday’s “easy” ride, the one to check the box required by the European authorities. That one was done with my new friend from Germany and was actually two, two-hour rides. Michael took the left (Captain’s) seat for the first ride with me on the right. Then we switched for the second ride. Like most jets, and in spite of all the high tech gee-wizardry that is supposed to make this one “easy” to fly, it is a two pilot airplane. When things start to go wonky, with warning lights flashing and aural alerts filling the flight deck, they can be two very busy people, with each person’s hands being filled with different tasks. The nice thing about European (EASA) rides is that they are not “jeopardy” events. One can’t really fail the ride. If a maneuver isn’t performed up to standard the crew simply does it again, learns from whatever mistake it was that they made, and moves on. There is always the possibility that someone will come along who simply can’t figure out how to do it right, but that is a pretty rare event at this level of aviation. These are not teenaged kids working toward their first solo flight in a single engine piston banger.

Another good thing about EASA rides is they focus on crew coordination and decision making, using the aircraft's capabilities to minimize risk. When things start to go wrong, the crew is expected to reduce the risks involved as much as possible. Checking destination weather, finding alternate airports, requesting priority handling to simplify the approach procedure as much as possible, are all expected to be part of the crew’s actions. Of course things still go wrong on an EASA check ride. Though there is a good chance that a pilot starting out today will never see a honest to goodness flashing red light in an actual cockpit, you have to practice something.

The second ride, the FAA sanctioned ride, was Friday. The FAA is the last aviation entity on the planet to still insist on “jeopardy” rides. Lose too much airspeed during one kind of maneuver, gain or lose too much altitude during another maneuver, and the examiner is required to terminate the ride, no second chances. The applicant is sent home with a “pink slip” and a notice goes in the federal records of a failed attempt to get a new rating. They can’t take away your birthday or anything, and a second ride can be scheduled after a certain amount of retraining is logged. The bitch with this approach is that anyone can have a bad day, and a ride can be “busted” even if the outcome of the flight was never in doubt. (You can read that as meaning it didn’t get near to crashing and no one was going to get hurt.)

During this check ride, one gets to demonstrate all kinds of skills that will never be called upon again. Steep turns in an airplane deliberately designed to correct any roll attitude greater than 33 degrees is one. The required 45 degree angle can be commanded, but one is literally fighting the airplane’s flight management system the entire time. Oh, and don’t gain or lose about a wing’s span worth of altitude while doing so, even if the ground is 10,000 feet away. Do so and the ride is a bust, come back another day to try again.

The same can be said for performing aerodynamic stalls, when the wing quits flying from too low an airspeed. Millions upon millions of dollars were spent when designing this aircraft to ensure that it could not be stalled. So, during an FAA check ride, some (not all) of the multiple layers of protection are switched off. Then the pilot can provoke a stall warning (not an actual stall) in order to demonstrate the “skill” of recovering from something that hasn’t actually happened yet. It is a bit like chopping off a foot to demonstrate the skill of hopping around on one leg.

After doing things in the airplane that the airplane was designed not to do, one gets to demonstrate the ability to handle multiple, cascading failures by making the poorest possible risk management decisions. No pilot I know would ever, with an engine shut down (OEI), press on to an airport where the weather was at minimums for making the approach. Nor would any airport I have ever flown to allow a piece of equipment to blunder onto a runway in front of an emergency aircraft, thus provoking a single engine low altitude (barely 50 feet in the air, less than the length of the aircraft) abort and missed approach. But an FAA check ride requires pretend stupid topped with a dash of silly. After the abort, the sky will miraculously clear and turn into day for the next landing, but the flaps will fail. A OEI / no flaps landing is like tip-toeing through a mine field. One faltering step will have the airplane careening through the grass on the side of the runway. (A sure way to bust any kind of check ride is to crash, even if it is a Sim.)

A saying that floats around the aviation world goes something like this, “It is best to exercise superior judgment and avoid demonstrating superior skills.” On the FAA ride we do just the opposite. The good news is that the Legacy 500 is such an overpowered little brute that it barely notices that an engine has packed it in for the day. So, what it taketh away in cooperating with steep turns, it giveth back when jumping over a wayward dump truck. The no flap, OEI landing? Just take it easy with the single thrust reverser, don’t pounce on the brakes with too much enthusiasm, and all should be well. (That is, by the way, just the highlights of the things that go wrong on this two hour check ride.)

For me the ride mostly demonstrated that it takes more than a few weeks to scrape off 6 years worth of salt water accumulated rust. Still, it went okay. The Check Airman was fair in his assessment of the things I could have done better and, to a large extent, all involved are well aware that check rides have little to do with actually using the airplane to move around the country day after day. I would have been quite comfortable to walk out of the sim, climb up into an actual Legacy, and head off somewhere; the Check Airman would have put his family on board behind me. When it comes right down to it, that is every Check Airman's actual pass/fail criteria. And it is the best one I can think of.

After the “official” ride was over, we had a good discussion of how I, as a flight instructor, can help him do his job as a Pilot Examiner. The people he checks will soon include people I have helped train. We are on the same side when it comes to getting them ready for both the check ride and the real world. Sometimes that is a delicate balancing act between two contradictory sets of standards.

With the rides over, and a new type rating in my pocket, the heat is off a bit. I am past the point where the job could still have gone very wrong, leaving us with few options for getting back to a boat someday. I have been “at the shop” pretty much every day since training started three weeks ago. When not working the GFS I was at home pouring over manuals, procedures, and test questions, often far into the night. Though not the FAA’s doing, to me this check ride carried more potential “jeopardy” than any other I have taken.

It will be good to get back to a more normal schedule. I am really looking forward to concentrating on getting to the front of a classroom, rather than to the front seat of the airplane. After all, they hired me to teach, not to fly. 

Hoops and boxes

Training goes on. Sometimes it is kind of fun. Sometimes it is enormously frustrating. Note to self, don’t take nearly six years off from doing something complex, then expect to go back to it without any kind of drama. The salt water rust on what were more than adequate aviation skills is embarrassing. The good news is that one need not be an expert pilot to teach other expert pilots how to make friends with a new piece of equipment. The regulations require that one carry a type rating to teach but the goal isn't to fly the thing out on the line, it is to help those who do to keep sharp.

It is a bit like being a riding coach for a MotoGP racer. All the coaches are ex-racers themselves, though not all of them are past champions. Past champions tend to have enough resources to do whatever they want after hanging up their leathers. Not many of them want to gypsy around the world, living in hotels, and spending work days at race tracks. But past champions or no, the coaches don’t race anymore. Yet they are an important part of the package that gets the racer to the top step of the podium.

There is no desire, on my part, to join the working pilots back out on the line. Hotel rooms and working days spent at airports stuffed full of human kind don’t hold much attraction. And, truth to tell, I don’t think getting a type rating in the airplane myself is all that important, though it is kind of fun to add another one to my license, just for boasting’s sake. In the aviation world type ratings are a bit like the gold star one got from a favorite teacher back in Kindergarten.

It would be more useful to run though the various scenarios, V1cuts, engine fires, ect., over and over to get the procedures down pat, sniffing out the smallest details of how to get it perfect. Then we could pass that along to the crews, like a riding coach helping get that last 0.1 of a second out of a difficult corner on the race track. But endless hours spent grinding through simulated skies setting up instrument approaches, doing circles in holding patters, talking on the radio? These folks do that day after day, and have been doing so for years. When it comes to a new airplane a bunch of hours figuring out the particular switch work is what they need, and they don’t need a full motion sim for that. Sim time should be spent concentrating on those difficult corners. Spend an hour doing V1 cuts, one after the other, where it is less then five minutes work from engine failure to flying or dying. Do ten of them in a row and the muscle memory will be there when needed. The same goes for engines blowing up, flight control failures, and electrical emergencies. Once the correct actions are taken, most problems are just an annoyance until the wheels touch down again. Then it becomes the maintenance department’s headache.

Repeated runs of low visibility departures and landings, the airplane at max take-off or landing weight, with the cross wind at maximum and / or the runways covered with snow would be time well spent. More of those difficult corners that lie at each end of a long, boring straight. Each of those only lasts a few minutes as well. A couple of hours in the sim and the crew could hammer out more of those twitchy departures and landings than they are likely to see in a year out on the line.

Still, as in all things in this modern world, the proper hoops must be jumped through, the boxes on various forms must be checked, and some sort of official blessing must be bestowed by both government and corporate powers-that-be. Though the sailing world has its own hoops, boxes, and brushes with officialdom, one rarely has to deal with such when out on big water in a small boat. Out there might be the last bastion of being completely responsible for ones’ own choices, answering only to Sister Ocean, Father Sky, and Mother Earth. That is not the same for the modern pilot. Cockpit voice recorders, data boxes, recorded communications, and radar flight track data will all be waiting to judge every action the crew took, and every word they spoke, after things went wonky. Even if they get the plane safely back to Mother Earth without putting a scratch on a passenger or bystander, some Monday morning quarterback somewhere will find fault with what they did. Human nature I guess, another advantage to being out on big water. Not a lot of humans milling around out there, looking for something to sound off about even if they don't have the slightest clue as to what really happened. Or what it took to survive.

Fortunately for me, when it comes to the effort of knocking off the rust, my Sim partner is one of those past champions who likes hanging around a race track. He is a retired check airman / instructor on Airbus airliners, flying mostly in Europe. His knowledge of instrument procedures / approaches / holds / misses / FMS operations is nothing short of encyclopedic. He even stumps our Instructor once in a while. It will be a bit embarrassing if, at some point down the road, he comes back for recurrent training and I end up as his Instructor. Sometimes the hoops and boxes are just short of silly, but at least I’ll know how to start up the Sim so we can work on getting the last bit of performance out of those difficult corners.

TwinkleStar

Two written tests are done and dusted. Two check rides remain. One, the FAA ride, includes a two hour oral exam. Those still lie a couple of weeks in the future. The GFS, a training aid that is a bare bones but accurate representation of the actual flight deck, is the focus of this week. Since hiring on, I have spent a bunch of days sitting in the thing, trying to get back up to speed. Hours were spent learning switch positions, running through checklists, rehearsing flows, and practicing procedures. Other hours went to learning to load the computers with flights plans, performance numbers, weight and balance data, instruments approaches, and holds. Then, of course, one has to figure out how to get the machine to actually do the stuff that has been loaded. All of it I kind of blundered through on my own, books in one hand while poking at switches, buttons, and curser controls with the other.

Now I am working the thing under the tutelage of an experienced Instructor, who will undoubtedly point out places where I taught myself the hard way to get something done. A nice thing is the EASA requirements insists that an additional GFS session actually be done in the Sim instead. Given training for two rides, there should be plenty of time to make friends with this new machine before the next round of tests. Though things are working out really well with the job, there are still rough moments to this. Some come from trying to scrub the rust off of pilot skills long neglected. Other bumpy moments happen while trying to fit into land living again. But the hardest are ones that I call “TwinkleStar” moments.

When we were on the boat with Daughter Eldest and Family nearby, Granddaughter Fourth would often climb up into my lap to help me play her a tune on my Uke. "TwinkleStar” was her name for whatever we played. (I'm sure you have already figured out where the name came from.) A few minutes here, a few minutes there, but those moments are the definition of what it means to share love. There were others, “Wizard Walks” with the grandsons, sitting in the park whittling shapes out of small branches, bird spotting, and cheering on the dolphins when they played nearby.

Once in a while, without warning and heedless of where I might be or what I might be doing at the time, one of those memories will flood through my mind, bringing a storm of both joy and hurt all jumbled together. The blow to the heart is enough to put a catch in one's breath, but there is an equally deep understanding that such moments are why we are here in the first place, that they are rare and wonderful. The memories should be cherished and celebrated as evidence of a life being well lived. The storm usually passes quickly and I go about my life knowing this is right where I should be at the moment, doing exactly what I should be doing. Daughters Middle and Youngest live near by, along with the grandkid Gang of Seven. New memories are already being added and, the truth is, if they weren't here we wouldn't be here either; great job or no.

It can be very confusing, being where I should be, where I want to be, doing something that is both challenging and worth my best efforts, yet being nowhere near where I long to be - playing “TwinkleStar” and watching the dolphins play.

Somehow we are fitting it together.

Stumbling my way through…

People who live on land have made this getting back to land thing far more difficult than it needs to be. Out on the water people tend to take your word for things. People “buddy boat” for weeks or months starting out with just a simple agreement between two crews who, likely, hardly know each other. They start to respect each other pretty quickly when making joint decisions on weather and routing. Should one boat run into some kind of trouble, the other will step up and help in every way possible. Often, in our experience, “buddies” will go far above and beyond what would be expected to get their new friends out of whatever jam they have found themselves in. Such is born without so much as a handshake, just people meeting, talking, finding they have a common goal, and then agreeing to help each other along for while. Which is sort of what it should be like to have a job.

No one thinks that the other crew might be lying about their level of experience, no one doubts that the stories told are basically true. It must be admitted that sailors are at least as good as those who fish at telling stories, but somehow that gets taken into account and all is well. No one thinks that the story will be exaggerated to the point where claims of knowledge and ability are being exaggerated. In fact it is often the other way around. People who have had thousands upon thousands of miles slip under their keels, with more stamps in their passports than most people have bills, are almost shy about their adventures. Telling tales is one thing, baseless and exaggerated boasting quite another. Rarely have I seen the latter among the cruising community.

One of our first buddy boats

That level of trust is seen in other ways. During our years on the water, we often helped out another crew with some mechanical problem. It was never necessary to offer proof that I knew enough to help. It was just assumed that I would help as much as I could, or at least not make matters worse.

Ah, but moving to land…

We bought a car. Part of that buying process involves getting it registered. Part of that registration process means listing an address. We don’t yet have an official address in Missouri, even though this is where I am currently living and where the job is located. We listed the address of the apartment we have a tentative agreement to lease. But we can’t sign that lease until I can prove I have a job. So, when the official job offer came in my email I forwarded it to the leasing office. The email, rightly so, didn’t actually have a benefits package or pay scale listed and so wasn’t good enough for the leasing office. Now I have to take a paper copy of the benefits package to the leasing office. I can tell them how much I will be making over the phone, but that isn’t good enough either. They need to see a piece of paper. In the meantime the car registrations ended up going to a place where we don’t actually live yet, and have since disappeared into the unknown. Surely ours are not the first registrations ever lost and we will be able to get duplicates. And just as surely it will be a pain in the ass, having to prove to some agent somewhere that I am who I say I am and I actually own the car they already know I own.

Then there is the background check. My resume goes back roughly 45 years. The contract company doing the background check sent me an email. They couldn’t verify that I actually attended the tech school I attended right out of High School in order to start my career, and insisted I send some kind of document. Oddly enough, my graduation certificate was actually near at hand. I took a picture of it and posted it in an email, a picture anyone halfway competent with photo shop could likely fabricate in less than 5 minutes. But it made them happy. Now though, they can’t verify that I actually worked at one company for eight years. They can verify the first five years, after that? Nada. They want me to contact the IRS, come up with some documents, and email them along. I will do it of course, but I thought the whole idea of a background check was to independently verify the claimed background. If you are going believe in the documents I send that can easily be fabricated, why not just believe my resume in the first place? The really weird thing, those last 3 years were spent flying with the person who brought me to this job, a person who as been a FS instructor for more than 5 years. If they want to verify I worked there, all they have to do is ask him. Hell, we went to Flight Safety together at least twice in those last three years for recurrent training.

Land living apparently makes one skeptical of everything and everybody. Nothing is taken at face value, no one’s word is good, everyone is assumed to be running some kind of scam. I guess that is understandable, just look around. The land lets people get away with things, things big water would use to administer a major smackdown.

All who live out on big water face the same challenges, deal with the same kinds of problems, have to have mastered the same basic skills. There is no where to hide when things go awry, and when they do everyone caught tends to work together; first to survive, then to recover. When cruisers meet it is something they know that they share. Somehow big water has infused much of the cruising community with a basic honesty.

Something I never thought about much until heading back to land, and something I really, really miss at the moment.

Balance

It has been several weeks since I put Kintala in the rear view mirror, heading back to St. Louis to work for Flight Safety International as a ground / sim instructor. The job is secure now, with the official start date less than two weeks away. There will be a ton of training / preparation work before I actually stand in front of a class room full of pilots or saddle up in a sim. First there is the required pile of paperwork to complete. There is an old saying in aviation that goes along the lines of - an airplane can’t fly until the weight of the design, test, and certification paperwork is at least equal to the maximum take-off weight of the aircraft. Digital files and computers have reduced that stack somewhat, but it looks like pre-employment paperwork for flight instructors has to equal about half the applicant’s body weight before they can be turned loose.

Once the paperwork is complete and indoc finished, the real training begins. There is computer-aided training on subjects yet to be disclosed. Then there is a new type rating for the aircraft they want me to teach, the Embraer Legacy 500. This will be my fourth type rating, the third I have earned at Flight Safety. A type rating is a month-long training exercise whose intensity is hard to describe. Modern day full-motion simulators are marvels of engineering. It is quite easy to forget that one is attached to Mother Earth, and so no matter how badly a maneuver might get botched, the ground will not rise up and smite thee. The risk might be simulated, but the tension on the flight deck can get very real indeed. There are emergency procedures; engine failures at the most critical moments of a departure roll, wind shear encounters, explosive decompression, flight control anomalies, fire…that must be utterly mastered. Perfect execution, in these cases, is just barely good enough. 

Along with the simulator training are forays deep into the aircraft systems: normal operations, failure modes, redundancies, limits, reversion modes…hydraulics, electrical, flight controls, pressurization, air conditioning, de-ice systems, auto-brakes…  Yes, there will be a test and no, it will not be graded on a curve. Every professional pilot in every airliner cockpit has been through similar training. That is a good part of the reason for it being safer riding along in an airliner that has lost an engine and half of its flight instruments on a dark and stormy Saturday night, than it is driving down the road on that same dark and stormy Saturday night after the bars have closed. On a sunny Sunday morning with all the systems up and running normally, it is safer to be sitting in an airliner than to be sitting in church.

For flight instructors there is another whole area of training required, that of learning how to use the training aids, those being the simulator, graphical flight simulator (GFS - otherwise known as a cockpit procedures trainer to us old pilots) and the myriad training aids used in the classroom. There will also be a week’s worth of instructing on being an instructor, something I am quite curious about and looking forward to doing. It all sounds rather daunting even if I have been through it several times before, and have spent hundreds of hours standing in front of a class room full of students. 

Will the upcoming years be interesting, challenging, and worth while? Yes. Will they be as good as those same years spent on Kintala, wandering hither and yon, being part of the cruising family? I honestly don’t know. My thoughts easily drift back to quiet anchorages, clear waters, and overnight passages; both easy and not so easy. Most of my dreams are of being on the boat, the first waking moments bring a touch of regret as the dreams give way to being back on land. My feeling is this is going to be both better than I had hoped, and harder than I had imagined. Its a bit like that first crossing to the Islands, half way there in the middle of the night, lightning on the horizon, lumpy waves occasionally splashing into the cockpit. One part of the brain says, "Relax, it will be fine. You know what you are doing." But some other part of the brain says, "Are you crazy? What are you doing here?"

For the curious, the link shows the exact place that will be my working "home," and the very sim I am about to learn. 

www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2017/november/pilot/turbine-school-is-in-session

We own a car...

We own a car. I know “American Normal” is to own at least one car, usually more. In fact, at this moment, we actually own two, though that will soon be rectified and is part of another story. But the fact is we have been rather happy with not owning a car for these past five years. When needed, we would rent a car for a day, weekend, or for a trip to see Daughters and families. We used one when we needed one, paid for it, and didn’t pay for having one around when it wasn’t being used. If we had owned a car it would have been hard to come up with a way to move the car as we wandered around. Even a small one wouldn’t fit on the deck, and trying to tow one behind Kintala would likely not work out very well. So we made do without. But now we need a car nearly every day as there is no public transportation that works with my new schedule.

I have a schedule. I know it is “American Normal” to have one’s life ruled by schedules. There are schedules for work, kids' soccer, church or other social obligations; people have self imposed schedules to catch sports games on TV or particular TV shows. Cruising “schedules” are a whole ‘nuther thing, spanning hurricane seasons and month long tide schedules. They shift and change; the schedule that worked northbound in the spring would bring nothing but trouble if tried southbound in the fall. On the boat, most of the time, if something caught my interest that kept me up most of the night, no problem. There was no alarm set for the morning and I could sleep as long as needed. But soon there will be a “schedule to keep,” though it is still likely to be different from most “land schedules.” 

Oddly enough, though airline passengers think of nothing but the schedule, and get rather irritated when a carrier doesn’t hold to the schedule, for people who actually work in the flying end of aviation “schedule” is a misnomer. Flying work comes at all hours of the day and night, everyday of the year. Some trips last a day, others two or three and, depending on the particular segment of aviation one is in, can run on for a week or more. In the training world that I am about to enter, the full motion sims (each of which cost in the millions of dollars range) normally work 20 hours a day, pretty much every day of the week. Since “flight time,” even in a sim, has daily limits set by regulation, it takes roughly two and a half instructors to ride herd on the crews training each day. Someone gets to head for work around 0300 in the A type M in order to crank up the sim at 0400. Someone else gets to shut the thing down at Midnight. The time slots shift so constantly that one of the questions during my official interview was if having a not-really-a-schedule schedule would be difficult for me. 

So my soon-to-be schedule-less schedule requires a car. And it turns out I’m not much of a city driver any more. In fact I’m not much of any kind of driver. I have turned in to that “old guy” who sets the cruise control at 5 over the speed limit and then goes about my business. Oh, I try to stay out of the “fast lane” so long as my exit doesn’t get off from that side. But if it does I’m not likely to speed up for the last mile or two just because the guy behind me is pounding on his steering wheel and shaking his fist at me. If I notice at all I’ll just wave back. Truth to tell though, I would rather try and get Kintala on a dock in a 3 knot cross current or cross the Gulf Stream on a dark and bumpy night, than tangle with Rt 40 through St. Louis at rush hour. I think doing the latter is far more hazardous. I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but some of these land dweller types are in an awful hurry for people who can’t drive very well. 

Living ways

Kintala in her shady corner. Endless thanks to The Nice
Man at the Marina who thought to put us there.

There is so much going on in the world today, or at least in the tiny bit of the world we call the US of A. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican offering for POTUS. It probably doesn't take much of a clairvoyant to guess what I think about that. It appears that the other choice will be Hilary Clinton. It may take a bit more clairvoyance to figure out what I think about that. But the reality is, I don't actually think much of it. Nor do I think much about it.

What I do think about is getting through the day, doing the best job that I can, and getting back to Kintala in, more or less, one piece. Don't get me wrong, if a person has to have a job then a job like this one isn't a bad one to have. I am working with my hands, using skills that have evolved and matured over decades of working on and operating machines. But, like any environment where the work is physical and the machinery large, getting hurt is only one misstep or careless moment away. I am not as sure footed and lithe as in days past.

This is an outdoors job which, occasionally, adds to the risk and excitement. Earlier this week thunderstorms rolled through just before the crew punched in for the day's work. As my bi-lingual friend Edwin and I stood in the open bay door of the big shop, he nursing my toddler español, lightning stroked the palm tree standing just a few yards away. It was a close hit, thunder and flash at the same moment, leaves and bits of tree falling to the ground moments later; the air crackled and the smell of ozone floated by. Edwin was rattled, as would be any normal person.

I laughed.

All of us spent most of that day working in driving rain. The yard flooded so deep that one hesitated driving an electric gulf cart across the lot. The running joke of the day? “This is a NO WAKE zone...be careful of manatees.” But the work went on.

If I recall correctly, that day saw me on three different boats, ending up inside a Hunter sitting on the hard, with water pouring through every overhead hatch and skylight while lightning flashed overhead. Normally one would worry about the lighting, but this was just one of dozens of masts poking up into the sky. The odds were good that Thor would pick some other boat should he decide to tickle one for fun. Beside that, lightning had struck within yards of me already that morning. What are the chances any one person would see two such events in one day? Statistically, anyway, I was probably the safest person in the yard. Not that it mattered. “I'm afraid of thunder” isn't an excuse for cowering in the shop.

The good news is that the worst offender in the “leaking hatch of the Hunter” department was directly over the bilge. Removing a floor panel let the water fall directly into a ready made bucket where it could be pumped overboard without doing any (more) damage to the interior. The bad news was that the bilge pump would not work in either the “Manual” or “Automatic” mode. That meant yours truly was kneeling over said bilge trying to sort out wiring which had endured a savage mauling; wire nuts, open wires, broken wires, and corroded wires with multiple – unnecessary - splices within inches of each other. Getting the pump back online took a while, and all that while the leaking hatch dripped a Chinese Water Torture on my bald head, while the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled. (Oddly enough, the survey listed the trashed wiring but didn't say anything about the pump not working. Wouldn't you think it would be the other way around?)

The whole scene was so absurd that all one could do in response was laugh. Nearly everyone in the yard shared rueful smiles and snide remarks in passing with, “It's a lovely day in the neighborhood” being a common refrain. (Somehow I think Mr. Rogers would have understood our pirating his signature line, and approved.)

Nearly everyone, but not all. One of the other “new guys” (one of three and even newer than me) soaked to the skin and apparently unhappy with his lot in life, punched out mid morning; never to be heard from again. Not everyone has the needed sense of humor to do this kind of work, and it is probably better that he realize this sooner rather than later. Still, new guys have a tough enough time getting accepted around here. Having one walk away because of a little rain isn't helping any.

That was a couple of days ago, but the boats and the days all seem to run together. At the moment the Tug is still hanging out there waiting for glass work and parts, the Hunter is waiting for the owner to decide just how much broken stuff he wants us to fix. There is another boat on the hard that has no toilet in the head, (I took out the old one but the new one didn't fit so a new, new one, is on order). By the end of the week I was hip deep in an Island Packet that is getting all new instruments and mast wiring. That boat is already sporting new holding and fuel tanks along with a ton of other work that I know nothing about. But, like I said, it all tends to run together. Days get lost. On Wednesday I was convinced it was Tuesday which, all said and done, isn't a bad thing. It meant that Friday was a day closer than I thought.

The view of the Manatee River from the shore by the office.

Not all days are ones where Sister Sky is threatening to scorch one with a bolt from the blue. In fact, most days are sunny, with a view of the Manatee River, Tampa Bay, and the sure knowledge that the Gulf of Mexico is just “out there”. The ocean breeze blows and the water sparkles with reminders that there are far worse places to add some cash to the cruising kitty; places like offices and cubicles. One takes the sunny days, the hot days, and the days filled with thunder, as they come. The parade of broken boats never ends.

Sometimes I wonder why human kind evolved this way, with most of us endlessly grinding out “projects” to keep the “life kitty” solvent. On the other hand, the moments of each day are very specific, very centered. That is not a bad thing at all. The sages and the mystics all tell us that being focused on something is the very fount of wisdom. But having spent nearly three years living and traveling on a boat, where the “big picture” mattered more than the minutia of every day, I am still trying to adapt to the change.

The view towards Tampa Bay and the mouth of the Manatee River.

Now the focus is much tighter: run this wire, make this connection, replace this pump, make this engine run right. The “big picture” doesn't matter. Trump or Clinton, thunderstorms or sunshine, soaking wet in the rain or soaked with sweat. This thing, this thing that has barely anything to do with the rest of my life, needs to get done. And then there is the next thing. It is the way most of us live, and we have all gotten used to it.

But there is another way to live as well. Someday, I will live that way again.

Worker Man

My Grand Sons (4) all play at being a “Worker Man”. They have tool belts full of plastic toys, tools they use to hammer plastic nails and turn plastic screws. They have hard hats, high visibility vests, and safety glasses they wear while at work. They will stop everything at the passing of a truck or train, and will gaze with wonder – for hours – at any crane, grader, front loader, or dump truck that is crane-ing, grading, loading, or dumping. The people who operate, repair, and build such wonders are, in the eyes of Grand Sons (4), some of the coolest and most important people on the planet. That makes me kind of happy since I am a worker man once again.

I don't work on cool stuff like cranes or dump trucks, but sailboats are an acceptable stand-in.

The first boat I tangled with, on day one, was an exercise in frustration. Boss New threw me a softball to get started: wire up a newly stepped mast. All the wiring was there, I just had to sort it out, hook it up and test it out. Sorting and hooking went a little slow as I fumbled with the parts room etiquette and searched for tools still looking for permanent homes in various tool bags. But testing? I couldn't get the lights to turn on, and went searching hither and yon for the missing voltage. It was at the switch panel but went missing somewhere between there and the mast step. Not just one light, but steaming, masthead, and deck lights all. Which was total weirdness. These are three simple circuits, battery hot to switch, switch to mast step, up mast to lights, back down to ground. How could the voltage go AWOL on all three in a run as simple as that?

That was an assumption on my part; there are few wiring diagrams on boats. Any that do exist are likely useless, the boat having been modified, hacked on, hacked up, and spooged for decades. Clearly I was missing something easy and stupid, some kind of spooge skunking away with my electrons. Near the end of the day I had to admit to Boss New that his New Guy wasn't making much progress. After a few moments of thought he remembered that boat having a second switch panel located in the cockpit, up high on the hard Bimini on the port side.

A second panel? To turn on the lights one has to go below to throw one set, then go back to the cockpit to throw the second set? Now that is some special kind of spooge there. I found the lurking panel, threw the switches, and nothing happened. I checked the fuses in the panel, all good, threw the switches again just because, and still had nothing. The search was interrupted by the end of the work day. Worker Man new (that would be me) made the short walk home with the problem giggling in the background and whispering “You are missing something stupid simple...stupid”. It was not a good way to start a new job.

This morning I let the lights lie for a bit while I traced down the VHF antenna wire, affixed a new new connector to the boat end (not sure why it was cut off, and the cutter didn't bother to mark which of the two coax cables, TV and VHF, was which) and went to check the radio. The VHF isn't located at the nav station or the helm, but on the starboard side of the companionway. Picking up the mic to test the radio had me staring directly at a third switch panel for exterior lights, mostly hidden under the mic wire hanging from the VHF.

The switch panel in the Bimini was a total red herring - double spooge if you will - taking up space but doing nothing. The switch panel in the companion way was the secret sauce, releasing the pent up potential. There was nothing wrong with the boat at all, or my work. I just wasn't pushing all the right buttons. I can fix it, but I can't make it go? Spooge.

With nothing left to do but add the TV coax connector I had this job on the run. But the boat needed to be moved so I was sent to a second mast wiring job. This one went easier since there was only one switch panel. With that done I went on to installing a macerating pump in the same boat, and while waiting on some fiberglass epoxy used to fix mounting blocks for the pump and “y” valve to cook-off, went to work sorting out the wiring to install a new house bank and starting battery. This boat was delivered to its new owner with but a single battery – so the engine could be started. Of course this “starting battery” was located in the house bank box, so there are wires running where they shouldn't, jumper wires not jumping anything at all, and a 4 gauge red wire running forward to a settee locker that just ended in bare copper, apparently lying around doing nothing.

As it turned out the other end of that wire was hooked to the main BAT switch post #2, making it about as hot as possible; an accident waiting to happen. It is gone now, the last bit of work done before day number 2 came to and end.

A day that, looking back, went a lot better than day one. I am still finding my way, the New Guy who takes lunch with the Spanish Guys, just to listen to them talk. (I asked and they don't mind.) I'm learning which doors the workers are allowed to use. (Yeah, I think it is a little weird as well. Deb can walk though the front door to order a part, but I'm not supposed to walk though it to pick the part up. The world is full of minor bits of weirdness.) The mechanic's golf carts go into a garage of their own, the last one of us in for the night pulls the big door shut. (Stuffed full of expensive personal tools, the extra security is appreciated.) There is a lot of laughing during break and lunch, the usual gruff humor of people who live in a world far removed from the air conditioned office buildings and the cubicles that fill them. A world were being bone weary at the end of a day is the cost of making a living, hands nicked and scratched, legs sore from climbing and stooping and walking. The yard is much like the maintenance hangers of the aviation world, except without walls or roof, and I think I'm going to fit in okay.

If I can't be a cruiser for a while, being a Worker Man is the next best thing.

Going to the Dark Side

No, I'm really not much of a Star Wars fan. Haven't seen the new one. Haven't seen any of the prequels. And it has likely been several decades since I have watched any of the original “Big Three”, though I vaguely remember enjoying them when they were first released. It might be an interesting experience to see them again. The older I get the less appreciation I have for simplistic story lines and clean cut boarders between right vs wrong and good vs evil. (The same chafes at me with the LOTR movies, and I never made it all the way through the three Hobbit movies – though maybe I will – someday.) My guess is the Big Three wouldn't be quite as much fun as the first time around.

Our home for

Nor have Deb and I decided to move to some kind of power boat. Kintala is still our home, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. But I am going to the Dark Side nonetheless. For I know a guy who manages a boat yard. A good guy. One I consider a friend, and one who does the kind of work that should always be done when someone is paying for a job to be done right. The person who owns the boat yard where my friend works feels the same, and their reputation is getting around. The yard is full of projects, there are more projects coming in, and they are having some trouble finding people to do the work that an increasing list of customers wants to have done.

My name came up and, as a result, I was invited to drop by and see if we might have something to offer each other. It appears we do. I have a lifetime spent working as a mechanic in a demanding field, with now eight years working on boats, years that include two extensive refits and uncounted repairs and modifications. They have a place for us to live and the means for us to fill a nearly depleted “cruising kitty." So, come sometime early next spring, Kintala will settle into a slip in a boat yard and I will start punching the clock as a full-time, paid, “professional marine technician," the very kind of person about whom I have written so many kind words of admiration and awe these past few years, including countless blog posts and a book. Talk about walking a mile in another person's shoes...

I am still working my head around the idea. My last job was as an extremely well-paid Director of Flight Operations / Chief Pilot. There was no time clock anywhere in the vicinity. In fact, I haven't punched a time clock in over 30 years. So the bad news is the kitty is not going to refill in any great hurry. The good news is that it doesn't have to fill very far to support a lifestyle far simpler and much more modest than the one lived as a Director of Flight Operations / Chief pilot. There is also this nagging thought: I am not a “professional marine technician”, not really. I was a professional aviation technician and am a boat hobbyist. A boatyard lives in a different reality. Get them in, get them done, get paid, get them gone. It keeps the lights on, fuel in the travel lifts, and money in the bank to cover the paychecks. No excuses. No alternatives.

I haven't been a citizen in that kind of world for a very long time, and it may not be as much fun as the last time around. But there is no escaping the reality. I have, over the years dealing with the marine industry, claimed to be at least as good and usually better than the ones whose work I have had to correct, replace, or live with. Now I get to prove it.

No excuses.

I do have to admit, though, it looks like they are having a lot of fun in the yard. There are boats with the bottoms peeled and boats with huge access holes cut in the hulls so fuel tanks and / or engines can be removed. Various systems are being installed, masts are down, ways to fit custom these or add specialty those are being sorted out. There is a wood shop, a fabricating shop, indoor sheds for working on some projects, and covered slips for working on others. A paint booth will fit anything they can haul, and there are three travel lifts in motion. It is exactly the kind of place kids with little belts full of plastic toy tools hope to find when they grow up. Being in the place stirred memories of hangars and airplane parts, tough people, tough jobs, hard work, and things getting done. Good memories of a world where I was once at home. A place to find some satisfaction in being at home once again.

A place that may not be the Dark Side after all.

So...

… we motor sailed to Bimini because it looked like it was the only weather window Sister Ocean was going to offer. From there, the Abaco Islands were a day sail north on an easy downhill run.

But the weather window closed. We waited. The southwest winds blew hard. Kintala bounced and thumped against the dock for a long, uncomfortable night of checking and resetting fenders and lines every half hour or so.

So we decide that being anywhere was better than being here. If the winds eased a bit we could still make the run to West End, just a day or so later than we had planned.  After a night anchored off we could turn the corner and be in the Abaco Islands the next day.

But that day or so meant running out of south winds and facing building winds and seas under the influence of a low off the US coast. That would pin us down for nearly another week, in the West end, when anchoring out would not be an option.  I like the marina in the West End. It is a beautiful place and we had a good time there last year. If we wanted to spend a ton of money we could hang out there and have a good time again. We don't have a ton of money. And it isn't like we can't have a good time someplace else in the Bahamas that is equally as beautiful.

So we decided to forgo the Abacos via the West End and head to the Berry Islands instead. The Berry Islands are a place we wanted to visit last year yet couldn't make happen. Being further East they feel less of an impact from the relentless low pressure areas that keep swinging out from the States, so the weather should be more accommodating. With an evening departure and an overnight motor sail into a building east wind, we could be in the Berries with more than a full day between setting the hook and having the weather ramp up. We would still be pinned, though the anchor would be down in a place that wouldn't cost us anything to wait. And it should be weather that doesn't hang around as long, giving us a chance to get moving again.

But an overnight sail after a sleepless night spent resetting the lines in nearly 30 knots of wind started sounding like a bad idea. The cruising kitty isn't that thin.

So we decided that we could leave the next day and still beat the weather. The forecast easing of the south wind would make quick work of getting around the Island, and the first part of the trip would on a beam reach. Eventually the south wind would fade in preparation for a building blow from the east, so more than half the trip would be motor only. An afternoon departure would put us there shortly after daybreak. It would still be an overnight motor sail, though it would be after a good night's sleep and an unhurried departure.

But a morning walk to the point showed the channel to be a lumpy mess in the still stiff south wind. We watched a sailboat slightly bigger than Kintala make the exit. She buried her bow deep in the water several times, and seemed to have trouble steering through the channel markers. She turned the corner north and the jib spun into view. Making tracks she was hull down over the horizon in less than 20 minutes. She was also rolling gunnel to gunnel and pitching spray into the cockpit to get it done. In 12 hours or so she was going to have a much easier time in the settling wind, but she was paying a good price to get there.

Look Ma! Kintala has a rudder!

So we decided to wait another day. The cruising kitty is never thin enough to have me taking that kind of a ride on purpose, and the weather window was still showing okay. The plan was just as good as it had been, except it still meant a 16 hour motor sail into steadily increasing head winds. And afternoon departure would put us there mid-day again; this time with mere hours between setting the hook and the weather change.

But we got up this morning and started reviewing the plan in preparation for leaving. Nothing much had changed in the forecast yet, for some reason, the tight weather window and the 16 hour motor into steadily increasing winds didn't hold the same appeal as it had the night before. Both Deb and I started looking for a good reason why we shouldn't do what we were planning to do. Watching the GRIB file play out we realized that, in two more days, there was a chance of sailing to the West End on an easy beam reach on a fading east wind.

So that's what we are planning on now.

The only hitch is that the forecast has the building east winds pushing us hard against the “T” dock for much of the weekend. The boat that was ahead of us relocated to an inside spot this morning. But this is the inside spot that I crashed getting out of last year, and I am not too keen on the idea of trying it again. Instead I turned a stout piece of 2 x 6 into a fender board and reset Kintala in place, making sure the spring lines would hold the board at the piling. There is a second stern line to hold the bow off the dock at the winds pick up, while the bow line shares chaffing gear with the spring. It shouldn't matter as the bow line will not be doing much over the next couple of days. Extra fenders were hung in places where the boat shouldn't touch the dock, so long as everything else works out according to plan.

Which, looking at the above, doesn't seem all that likely to happen.

(By the way, I am still fumbling around a bit with the east / west thing. The East Coast is now West of us and that has messed with my internal compass. I keep saying "east" than looking toward where I know the coast lies. It will take a few days to re-calibrate.)

What a difference a day makes!

These guys were fleeing from a big bull shark.