“Confiscated, My Ass!”

CoverX300_TwentyYearsInTheCaribbean_CaribbeanIslandStories Ninety Whiskey was my pride and joy. It was bright red, and trimmed in broad bands of gold. Lettering was in simple black gothic and its number in those large black letters was N8590W. I paid a pretty good amount of money to have that paint job done.

When I was approaching a field I would give them the whole number.

“Tower, this is Piper, November eighty-five ninety whiskey, etc. etc.,” and they would repeat that back, but from then on they would refer to me as “Ninety Whiskey”.

Letters in black on one side of my airplane read; ‘Island House Flowers, Ltd., Dominica, BWI.’ The other side read ‘Island House Hotel, Dominica, BWI’.

Ninety Whiskey was parked at Lantana airport, south Palm Beach County, Florida. They called it Palm Beach County Airport on some of the maps, but we all knew it as “Lantana Airport”. This is where the popular old comic strip, Smilin’ Jack, was penned by Zack Mosely years back.

She was a lovely Piper Pathfinder and I bought her umteenth-hand from the Beechcraft dealer on the southeast corner of the old field at Ft. Lauderdale. The aircraft was about twenty years old and one of our sons asked if that wasn’t about a hundred in aircraft years; which, maybe it was.

I used Ninety Whisky to fly back and forth to Dominica.

No one knows the maximum luxurious convenience of private flying until they have done it. All the pilot has to do is check the weather report, examine the plane carefully for a few minutes, start her, and taxi out into position at the end of the runway. A short pause is all you really need to test the magnetos and then push the throttles all the way forward and take off.

The earth is usually always interesting below you, the clouds unbelievably beautiful, and you are averaging real speed.

If you fly along in a dreary overcast and then cut up through a hole you will see the most glorious sunshine, on the whitest cloud tops, that anyone can imagine. Even the rainbows are beautifully different up there; a circle on those cloud tops with the shadow outline of the plane in the center.

I know I have over simplified the convenience and beauty so I should confess that, when one flies from the coast of Florida down through the Bahamas to Puerto Rico with only one engine and enough gas to make it to South Caicos Island, you’ve got to think about ditching procedures.

The fact is that I think about it the night before. I think about it that morning. Actually, I never stop thinking about it for long until I reach Dominica and then, on the return trip I do the same fretting.

As Alan Funt used to say on Candid Camera; “Some day, some where, when you least expect it…”

For this reason I did not like to take passengers in the two back seats because anyone there almost never survives a ditching. Freight, yes. Passengers, no.

There have been some interesting times when things did not go right, but usually it is just splendid.

When you fly down the island chain you stay as high as advisable. Over ten thousand is not recommended unless your cabin is pressurized; headaches and even loss of consciousness could occur if you happen to be a little ill at the time. Altitude, however, gives you more speed, gas economy, and nature’s air conditioning. Having that cabin on top of the wing with nothing between it and the sun makes the high altitude coolness especially welcome.

Flying is certainly not like a car on a highway. If something goes wrong with your vehicle you just pull over and wait for a Trooper to come and call a tow truck. In a plane it’s an emergency landing which is most often a ditch or a crash.

Down the islands the heading is about 125 degrees and you fly across island after island. In between islands it’s long or short stretches of ocean. Some stretches of water are maybe twenty or thirty miles and some twice that. In time you reach the fueling stop at South Caicos at the southeastern end of the Bahama Islands. Coming into the area of Caicos the water is shoal and beautiful. Until you actually reach Caicos you watch the sea. Cumulus clouds build about mid morning; about the time you are getting close to Caicos. The clear view of the islands gives way to seeing them here and there between clouds.

You must decide whether to go below the clouds where you cannot see very far ahead, or stay up there, using the identifiable shallowness of the water to help you keep on course until you see an island and then go down and ID it. There are no radio beacons; your compass is your guide.

Shallow water continues to assure you that you are not heading out to sea and real danger. Unfortunately the cloud bottoms are darker than the tops and in the distance the underside of them often looks like islands.

I was on this run one morning. The scud was getting down to about four hundred feet above the surface. I did not locate South Caicos and the clouds were getting even lower, but I did finally see a small island that I knew had to be near Caicos. The clouds were thickening so I did not want to lose sight of it. I started staying right over it by keeping a tight circle turn.

I was calling Caicos tower to see if they could see me. They answered immediately, but in the negative. Their signal was so loud and clear that I knew I was very close, but I could not see the island and they said they did not hear my engine.

“Ninety Whiskey,” Caicos tower announced, after it was obvious that I was not able to find the field, “I’m passing you over to Grand Turk tower, the frequency is…” I did not catch it, but I knew it. I was watching the stalling speed in that tight turn over the unidentified, banana shaped, island. Tight turns can be quite dangerous; you can stall and spin in.

“Grand Turk, this is November eighty five ninety whiskey.” I explained after I made initial contact with them. “I’m in a tight circle over a small island with little vegetation that is oriented east and west and has the shape of a banana or a boomerang. Can you give me a heading for South Caicos?”

“Ninety Whiskey, what is our bearing from you?”

I counted to ten, quickly, clenching my jaws. My radio compass was spinning like a kid’s gyro.

“Grand Turk tower,” I said in a growl, “How, may I ask, can I give you a radio bearing when I just told you I am in a tight turn, trying to keep this frigging island in sight?” I admit that I was shouting at the end of that transmission and wondering if ‘frigging’ is a curse word. This is British territory and it’s probably fortunate for all parties that I suddenly saw South Caicos runway through a break in the clouds just to the east.

“I have Caicos,” I told Grand Turk tower, I thought with great control. “Ninety whiskey out!” I switched frequency and went on through a hole in the clouds to find myself aligned perfectly with the glaring white crushed coral at the west end of the runway. The old wrecked DC3 was still off to the right of the approach where it had been for years. I hoped that Caicos had been monitoring as my wheels squeaked on contact.

They forgave me for landing without clearance. The field was empty of aircraft. They do sell fuel for a living.

I cleared customs and immigration at their temporary-permanent office in what the British call a caravan and we call a house trailer. I visited the gentlemen’s convenience, refueled, and declined the little airport’s trailer-restaurant’s lobster sandwiches and drinks. Not much in a small plane accommodates nature’s inexorable call.

San Juan is only about four hours away from Caicos as the Piper flies. I head south to Hispaniola and then east to my destination, Puerto Rico, the next island east.

San Juan International is on the eastern quarter of the run of Puerto Rico’s northern coast. Here you have VOR stations (very high frequency omnidirectional range) or Omnis. These are marvelous devices that read out on your instrument panel your relationship to its known location. You can home on an Omni with great ease. They can lead you blind into an airport pattern.

San Juan’s runways are so long you have to land early and carefully or you will find yourself taxiing a long way to get to the terminal.

Here I refuel and go through customs because of the stop out of the country at Caicos. I am sure the hotel over the airport terminal building is not on Robin Leach’s list of the world’s finest. The only place to eat is downstairs at one of what I think of as the airport’s plastic palace restaurants.

In the morning there is complimentary coffee from a device on the hotel room wall, and then the plastic palace for breakfast. All ready again, it takes only a few minutes to untie 90 whiskey and check her before starting.

East from Puerto Rico, it’s a wonderful flight across the spectacular islands of the Lesser Antilles.

Sometimes, when the weather is sparkling clear, it’s like a National Geographic artist’s rendering of a map of these islands. There they are, ten thousand feet below you, passing slowly, deliberately, as you fly eastward. They are so beautiful that they don’t seem real.

Finally, the last islands on the journey are the little French group between Guadeloupe and Dominica; the Ille de Saints.

Just ahead, cloud covered, and a dark foreboding blue-green, is Dominica.

The Melville Hall Airport is on the north East Coast.

The field is about a mile long and slopes gently from the west end to the sea. You go in on the right side of the field. Ease inland up a foothill ridge of Morne Au Diable parallel to the field until you are about to go into the clouds. Then you bank sharply to port and swoop down the ravine between that ridge and the next one to the south. At final approach there are thousands of coconut trees on each side, higher than the plane. There is almost never any competing traffic; the tower only gets about four airliners a day to keep them awake.

On one trip down I was asked, and I agreed, to take a young mechanic from a field in New England, with me to Dominica. Attorney and pilot, Beny Arnold, wanted to repay a favor to the young man. Besides it was off-season and we could put him up at the hotel without much cost or inconvenience.

We did not seem to have much in common with the fellow but he made himself at home for those two weeks and we had little contact with him until it was time to fly back.

I headed back to the states, my passenger in tow. We flew into San Juan in the afternoon and both walked through the pilot’s gate of customs. Outside, in the terminal proper, my passenger remembered that he had left his paperback book in the plane and since we were going to be over-nighting upstairs in the airport hotel he wanted to go back out and get it.

Starting back through we were stopped by customs agents who alleged a tip that we were carrying drugs.

I immediately volunteered to show them the plane. I had brought only a briefcase and shaving kit in with me and I also showed them that.

The plane not only passed inspection but the names on the side showed the agent that he had the wrong Dominica. His tip was for a Dominican Republic plane.

When we returned back into the customs area however my passenger had been taken into a room and was being interrogated. It looked heavy. I was told that the fellow had a matchbox of marijuana and that my plane was going to be confiscated.

President Nixon had just ordered the no-tolerance rule for drugs, and US Customs was reportedly confiscating boats, yachts, and planes when minuscule amounts of pot was found on board.

“Confiscated, my ass!” I shouted, outraged.

Taken momentarily aback the officers asked why I thought they could not take my plane.

“I did not know the man had any drugs on him,” I bellowed. I also knew that we had passed through customs once and that if I had to take the case to court I could show that the kid could have picked up the pot in the airport proper, after going through customs. In criminal cases all one needs is reasonable doubt of guilt to have the case blown.

I was digging for my Attorney-at-Law card and finally produced one for the customs officer. “You can not make this one stick, Pal,” I said.

I remembered that Margie always said she knew I was mad when I called someone Pal.

They conferenced about it and decided to forget the confiscation.

I was perturbed, and I could use another word that begins with P, but I figured, ‘let the dumb sod find his way home some other way.’ I did not want to see him again.

The next morning I was alone in the airport’s downstairs plastic palace having breakfast, when one of the customs officers came and sat down at my table.

“We are going to let the kid go,” he started.

“So?” I huffed, still annoyed that the mechanic would endanger Ninety Whiskey with his stupidity, especially after we had put him up for a fortnight’s vacation.

“Won’t you take him the rest of the way with you?”

“No, way! The crazy bastard can float home on a coconut log as far as I’m concerned. Screw him,” I growled.

The officer sat for a long moment in thought and then said, “He has no money, nothing. What if this were someone near and dear to you?”

That hit me where I did not expect it, and I immediately imagined someone near and dear to me in the same predicament. The customs officer saw that I bought it.

“You have kids, don’t you?” he smiled.

“Yes, damnit,” I frowned. “I’ll take him.”

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  1. Pingback: Twenty Years In The Caribbean: Caribbean Island (true) Stories | Inkprov

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