Story time with Omnicognic!

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Gather 'round kiddies, it's story time:

Todays tale, Omni's island adventure...

I always loved sailing and grew up around boats.. so when I got a yacht delivery job it was a dream come true. I was working for a bareboat charter company. People would charter a boat, sail down the islands then catch a plane back. Our job was to fly down and sail the boats back. I was your average deck monkey.. flew down to St. Maarten to pick up a boat, but thieves hit it first, stripped it clean and scuttled it..

when we went to fly back, the flight was overbooked. I stayed behind for the next flight. I ran into an old friend from high school, he inherited a small puddle jumper airline from his dad and was bringing parts down in his own private plane.. after a bit I accepted the offer to fly back with him.

The first leg of the flight was uneventful, great weather and his plane, an experimental, looked just like some I built as a kid, also the type Burt Rutan was famous for, a canard wing in front main wing in the rear, rudders on the wing tips, twin engine, carbon fiber honeycomb and extremely light..

(I had nodded off at this point) I don't recall which island we stopped at to refuel.. but we bought gallons, they put in liters..

Being an experimental, an occasional glitch was not uncommon. In this case half of the instrument panel lighting went out..the side with the fuel guages.. several hours later, I woke up when the noise stopped..half asleep I started to unbuckle until I realised we were still flying..

I asked where we were, Alex my buddy the pilot, says "somewhere between Cuba and the Bahamas.." it was night, we were gliding and there was no land anywhere close on the map.. no response on the radio.. and after repeated attempts to restart the engines, the batteries were exhausted.

As we got lower, the almost full moon was just peeking above the horizon off to our starboard.. I saw a dark spot in the shimmer off the water... an island.. I pointed it out and we headed that way..

For you airplane buffs and interesting fact about canard planes, they won't stall. This is because the smaller wing in front, the canard will stall 1st, dropping the nose and increasing airspeed before the main wing can stall.. bad news for us because we had to land at a higher rate of speed than a conventional plane..

We flew once by the island and could make out a long flat place to land it "looked" smooth.. on our next pass we had to make it work, there wasn't enough speed for a second chance...

I grabbed my personal EPIRB and manually switched it on in case I was too injured to do it after we landed.. it began to smoke a lot... CRASH!! !... turns out the long "smooth" patch was exposed coral reef and after we ground to a halt we lept from the now smoke filled cockpit..

After airing out a bit, we grabbed our stuff and moved up to the beach. My EPIRB caught fire and I tossed in into a pool to put it out.. safe in the knowledge that it wouldn't be bringing rescue.. Alex said the plane had it's own the would activate in the event of a ditching as it was water activated.. tomorrow morning we would dig it out and activate it..

END OF PART 1..

I will finish the story in a couple hours.. stay tuned...

That is a great story. Sounds like you have lead an adventurous life.

I think it was Sir Edmund Hillary who said "Every adventure is 99% boredom and 1% stark raving terror!" (I attempted to look it up to be sure I quoted it correctly and couldn't find it..lol)

Sounds like my life is an adventure then.

Cool story, Omnicognic.

Omni's Island adventure part II:

The smoke that had originally eminated from my defective EPIRB, still lingered in the cockpit stinging the eyes and burning the nose..so we decided to get the rest of our stuff in the morning.. I started a fire and we tried to sleep..

Alex woke me up a few hours later.. the sun was almost up and it was light enough to see.. to see the plane was floating away! it was about 300 yards off the beach and floating as if made of styrofoam.. in the moderate breeze it was making good time..away.. the tide had come in and the plane had gone out. No worries right? Now the plane's beacon will trip!... yeah right.. it never sank.. (it floated up on the beach in VA a few months later, the local sheriff declared it a navy drone and had it hauled to the dump after the navy refused to claim it)

As the plane bobbed merrily out of sight with no signs of sinking, Alex started to freak out... this man had never spent the night without electricity in his life, never gone camping, hunting fishing... anything.. I got wood for the fire and tried to calm him down..

ON THE ISLAND, DAY 1:

Stop Think Observe Plan,

While Alex rocked himself by the fire, I looked around the island. There wasn't much to it, it was S shaped long and narrow, you could see the water from one side to the other. there were lots of coconut palms and other brush and a Breadfruit tree??! ! how it got there I have no idea.. the big surprise was ours was not the first plane to crash there, a WWII era plane of some sort (I have been asked about flight 19, I don't think this is one of those) fortunately, there were no mosquitoes.. unfortunately there were mi-mi's (biting gnats) in swarms, fire ants(again, how'd those get there?) and rats... Water was my main concern, but ended up not being a problem because it rained for about 15 minutes 3 or 4 times every day.. which made staying dry a concern.. there was nothing usable off the old plane except wiring I used to tie a lean-to together from palm fronds..

I found an old bucket for a potty (had a small hole in it, useless for water storage) but poor Alex couldn't cope with using it and soon developed constipation which really worried me.. we got into a routine of gathering driftwood from a huge pile at one end of the island where all sorts of debris seemed to collect.. and gathering things to eat. Conch was plentiful around the island as well as crabs both land and water types, fish, coconuts, breadfruit (which we exhaused supply of early), and rats..(yes we ate rats, they taste just like squirrels.. get over it lol )

AFTER 1 WEEK:

Eventually, Alex's problem corrected itself after drinking too many green coconuts which I had a hand in
our routine continued until one afternoon, Alex was running down the beach screaming "A BOAT!! A BOAT!!", I threw a large chunk of one of the tires from our plane (the landing gear was the first to fly off when we hit the reef, and stayed behind when the plane floated away) which made a nice black smoke signal.. we screamed and waved.. and the boat came closer... what we saw was from my point of view horrifying.. it was a boat overloaded with people riding low in the water.. refugees I suspect from Haiti.. they didn't stop.. we couldn't have gotten on if they had.. I hope they made it.. but I have my doubts... it really troubles me, the vision is burned in my mind..

AFTER THE 3RD WEEK:

Early one morning, something was poking me in the ribs.. I awoke with a start, looked up to see the most beautiful thing in my life: A smiling human face that wasn't Alex.. "Hey mon, you 2 need a lift?" marlin fishermen from the bahamas, saw us and came ashore.. and took us to civilization..

Rescued!

No one missed us! There was never a search! Alex didn't file a flight plan, and it wasn't unusual for him to go off sightseeing for a few weeks.. my family expected me to be gone for a few weeks, and I never called to tell them the change of plans.. these things could have led to us never being found.. stupid mistakes..

So, there is my survival story..
Alex still loves to fly but I swear he carries more survival gear than luggage.. I got fired from my Yacht delivery job for not showing up to work and not calling in (I'm Serious!!)

Ha ha, what a story. At least you remained calm and didn't freak out. Don't know the region, but I guess you're lucky that you didn't run into some bad folks. Three weeks is an eternity.

a bit of a foot note.. the guys who picked us up told us the island was called "Culebra" which means snake in spanish, there were no snakes on this island, but it was shaped kinda like a snake. he pointed out where it is, but it wasn't on his chart, however, apparently just off the island is great fishing, worth the long trip.. long ago I tried to look it up but couldn't find it (there are lots of islands named "Culebra" but none i could find are this one..) today after writing this I spent a few hours trying to find it with various satellite imagery and more up to date maps, but no luck.. I also tried to find that article where the plane washed up on the beach.. I found many similar, but not the one from our plane..

to whoever messaged me with the questions about the old plane on the island, i accidently deleted your message.. sorry, please send it again or ask here.