Twenty minutes later we’d found one medium sized cargo ship and a small white sail boat that seemed much too small to be so far out at sea but no Stormin’ Norman. We were running out of time and needed help. I knew that if we could get the current exact longitude and latitude of the disabled ship I could put it into the GPS and fly right to it. But how to get an updated position report from the Coast Guard this far out at sea? As a ferry pilot I spend a lot of time in the middle of the ocean out of normal radio range. Usually I bring along a HF radio to make position reports and call for help if needed but if that doesn’t work there’s always one last chance of yelling for help available, commercial airliners. Cruising along at thirty eight thousand feet an airliner can pick up a small plane’s transmissions over one hundred miles away and is a great last ditch chance for help for a pilot in a bind. I tuned in the frequency that I knew that airliners use to chat with each other and called in the blind.
“Any plane, any plane, is there anybody out there who can assist in a search and rescue operation?”
“This is American 325, how can we be of assistance?”
I told the pilot of the Airbus flying high overhead what we were doing and asked if he could possibly get in touch with the Coast Guard and see if they could get us an updated position report of the Stormin’ Norman. The captain of the American flight told me to standby while he made the attempt. The minutes ticked by as the airliner got farther and farther away. Finally the pilot came back with the good news, he’d somehow managed to contact the Coast Guard in Puerto Rico and had gotten a new position report for me. With his radio signal already fading away the captain read of the coordinates while I copied them down. I thanked the captain for his help and his reply was almost unreadable as his aircraft flew out of range.
After quickly punching in the new coordinates into Rocky’s GPS I hit the “GO TO” button and waited for a new heading from the magic box.
“That can’t be right.” I said to myself as I read the new heading and distance displayed on the GPS. What had me so confused was that the new location was only two miles from the original spot we’d flown to in the first place. If the Stormin Normin was indeed at those coordinates the three of us would have surely seen it.
Frustrated, I headed the Cessna back to the area we’d been searching for the last thirty five minutes. As we began to search for the Stormin’ Norman again I thought about what might be wrong. The latitude longitude that the Coast Guard had given us was approximately the same both times so I had to assume that it was accurate. By process of elimination that just left the GPS as the problem.
“But it’s a brand new unit.” I thought, “It should be perfect.”
Then it hit me, it wasn’t my GPS, and maybe Rocky had his lat long set on what I called the “dummy” setting. You see traditional latitude longitude coordinates are expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds. But trying to figure out that thirty minutes is halfway between degrees was too difficult for some laymen to understand so they came up with a converted system that expresses the coordinates in only degrees, meaning that thirty minutes would now be displayed as point five instead. Either method works just fine but if you put one type of figures into a GPS set for the other the result could be miles off. I quickly brought up the settings page on Rocky’s GPS and saw that my suspicions were correct, he had it on the dummy setting. Cursing myself for not thinking of it sooner I changed the GPS to the traditional setting, input the lat. long. figures again, hit the “GO TO” button and was rewarded with a new location that was almost twenty nautical miles away.
“That’s more like it!” I shouted as I aggressively banked the Cessna to the new heading. I explained what I’d done to the Stormin’ Norman’s owner and John as we headed to what I hoped was the disable fishing boat and after looking at the fuel gauges told them that this was our last chance.
“We don’t have enough fuel left for much of a search!” I yelled over the engine noise to my passengers who were up on their knees scanning the ocean. “It’s either there or it’s not so keep a sharp eye out! Also, we don’t have time for a practice run, so be ready, cause if we find the boat it’s gonna be one pass and haul ass!”
With the sun getting low on the horizon we approached the new search area.
Suddenly John sang out. “There she is!”
Sure enough just off our left side a black and white fishing boat with rust accents appeared bobbing in the ten foot swells. I swung the plane away from the Stormin’ Norman and flew out bound for thirty seconds before turning back. Felling like I was flying a torpedo bomber in the battle of Midway I descended down to fifty feet over the Caribbean sea and bore down on my target. With a half mile to go I pulled the latch pin and the jump door slammed up against the bottom of the right wing.
“You guys ready?” I yelled over my shoulder, not wanting to take my eyes off my flying that low to the water.
“Just about!” Came the unsure reply from behind my seat.
I spared a glance back at the Stormin’ Norman’s owner and was shocked to see that although he had the Styrofoam float in his lap, ready to launch out the open door at my command, the fifty feet of nylon line was a rat’s nest around his feet. I was mortified. If just one loop of that line snagged his foot he’d be pulled out the open door and hit the ocean at eighty miles an hour. But not before hitting the tail of the plane, causing us to plunge into the ocean after him and generally ruining my day.
“Get control of that line!” I screamed at my bombardier as I turned my attention back at the disabled boat that was rapidly filling my wind screen. Unlike a world war two Japanese aircraft carrier the Stormin’ Norman wasn’t under power which made lining up my bombing run easier but I was only going to get one shot and it had to be perfect. I pushed the left rudder a little for one last adjustment and gave my crew a fifteen second warning. Damn that boat was coming up fast!
“Stand by! FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE! DROP! DROP! DROP!”
I pulled up sharply, banked right and watched as the yellow Styrofoam float sailed toward the Stormin Normin trailing the nylon rope like a comet’s tail. It missed the ship’s deck by a scant ten feet and splashed into the water fifty feet beyond. As I gained altitude and continued the right turn I saw two crew members dive overboard after their prize. With nothing left to do I took up a heading back to St. Croix and began to sweat the fuel situation.
Two hours later the lights of the island appeared over the horizon and thirty minutes later the wheels of the Cessna squeaked onto the runway at the airport. The next day the Stormin’ Norman’s owner came by our office with a bottle of Crow Royal and the news that his crew was able to install the fuel pump and get underway. Our mission to save the Stormin’ Norman had been a success.
