A personal telephone call from the Captain of a Holland America ship signified the importance of assistance urgently needed. A couple of passengers onboard had received a call that their daughter had been kidnapped back home in the US. They needed to catch a commercial flight from Nassau back home as soon as possible.
Maule beached at a popular tourist atraction in the Bahamas along side some pigs—one of the many fun moments during an 11,000+hr commercial seaplane career!
No better way to pass the time fishing from the wing of a Maule somewhere in the Exuma Cays, Bahamas while on a charter flight.
The islands of the Bahamas never cease to amaze. The combination of white sandy beaches and beautiful blue water makes for the perfect flying destination and a great view. Paul Harding captures this color palette with a shot of the Schooner Cays, as seen under the wing of his Cessna 172.
Rotating ten feet off the water, there was an ominous and very audible bang from the rear of the aircraft. Immediately the seaplane skewed 45 degrees into the east wind, heading us at 80mph toward a frightening scene. One can scoff at that expression of “doing things by the book” but in near every case of incident, almost all were resolved safely by resorting to this method—except this was not in the book.