The Cannibal Queen (21 page)

In moments we were clipping along to the northeast, out of the harbor into the huge open bay. Yossarian and Patty arranged themselves in the cockpit, so I did too. Yossarian adjusted a couple of ropes that trimmed the sails, then sat there looking all around.

I like this aspect of sailing—apparently when you aren’t changing course, there is a lot of sitting around contemplating things.

We got acquainted and they answered a good many simple questions from their passenger. Pretty soon we were discussing the breeze and the sea and other boats and having a fine time. Captain Yossarian and Patty were an excellent pair to go sailing with.

You can hear a sailing vessel go through the water. Without engine noise or vibration, you can hear the water lapping at the hull. It’s a nervous sound, but very pleasant.

The boat moves in response to the wind’s pressure on the sails and the action of the swells against the hull. The water was relatively calm and I didn’t feel even a touch of queasiness, which I feared I would. The wind blowing, the sails taut against the sky, the sun on the water, the motion of the boat—it was fascinating. I can see how a man could fall in love with it.

“How fast are we going?” I asked.

Yossarian studied the water flowing by, the angle of the sails and our heel, the strength of the wind, then said, “Oh, maybe three and a half or four knots.”

He owned a house in Rockland, he said, and did some graphic art. But his love was taking passengers sailing on Annie McGee. He had been sailing since he was “this high,” and made a gesture indicating a small boy. He had only flown once, he remarked, and the pilot let him fly the plane for twenty minutes, so if he ever decided to take lessons he had twenty minutes to put in the logbook. He had owned Annie McGee for four years. Her keel was laid in 1950 in Brunswick, Maine, by a builder who had a real day job. So working nights and weekends he took seven years to finish her. When Yossarian acquired her she had been neglected. He was fixing her up board by board as time and finances allowed.

Patty had been a cook last summer on a cruise schooner and now was pushing paper ashore. She was learning to sail and tried to go out with somebody every time she had a day off. After we had been sailing for about an hour, she went forward and stretched out on the cedar deck for a nap. The boards were warm in the diffused sunlight and the motion of the schooner quite pleasant. If I had been an older hand at this, I would have enjoyed a nap too.

All in all, it was the most delightful Fourth of July I have spent in many a year. Watching other boats pass by, waving, steering with the tiller and feeling the sea’s pressure on the rudder as I listened to Yossarian tell me about his ship, I felt completely relaxed. Normally I get this feeling only when flying way up high on a beautiful day. I decided that if I ever get tired of flying—fat chance!—or lose my medical certificate, I’m going to learn to sail. I know there are schools here and there that teach lawyers, lottery winners and heiresses how to do it, so I’ll find one and sign up.

That evening I dropped into bed while the fireworks were booming over Rockland and promptly went to sleep. Sailing apparently has that effect.

The day before the Fourth, I drove around Rockland and Rockport and Owls Head, the peninsula where the airport is located. I was impressed. The weather was warm, almost eighty degrees, the breeze just a zephyr, the white houses hard to look at in the sun. The lawns were neatly trimmed and the streets free of potholes. All in all, a person looking for a place in the United States to drop anchor could do a whole lot worse. They even had a McDonald’s.

The next day I asked Captain Yossarian about the winters, and he told me they are usually long, cold and snowy. But this past winter, he said, it didn’t snow after January so the rain just made mud. He didn’t like mud.

On the fifth of July I drove slowly through town at 7 A.M. on my way to the airport and looked again. I could live in a town like this on the coast of Maine. I can personally attest that the summers are fantastic, although Yossarian said fog often rolls in off the sea. One can see why this coast inspired artists like Winslow Homer and the Wyeths and politicians like James G. Blaine and George Bush.

What the Maine coast doesn’t have are beaches with golden sand and warm water. Yossarian referred to the water as liquid ice. I dipped a hand in and quickly withdrew it. This ocean is the North Atlantic, folks, and it’s cold and gray all year long. The surf breaks on limestone and granite rocks. Still, if you can do without sand in your swimming trunks and the occasional frolic in the surf, I highly recommend the Maine coast. I’m coming back someday soon.

I’m flying under the leading edge of a warm front, only this time I’m approaching from the cold side. This is the same front I flew under coming north through western Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It stalled there for three or four days, then gradually resumed its track to the northeast.

The clouds are well above me—I’m flying at 2,000 feet—and thickening. I can no longer see shadows. The weather briefer at Flight Service predicted showers and low ceilings today over northern New Hampshire and Vermont, and isolated thunderstorms this afternoon. I hope to be through here before the thunderbumpers start cooking.

Showers I can handle. Low ceilings I can handle. What I can’t handle are mountains obscured by clouds and mist. These old, eroded mountains are pale imitations of the Rockies, but a little mountain will kill you just as dead as a big one if you fly into it.

From Rockland I flew north up the coast of Penobscot Bay. I hadn’t yet had enough of picturesque little villages huddled around harbors filled with boats. At Belfast I turned inland. Over Waterville I saw the low clouds over the mountains to the west. The mountains looked blue and indistinct in this moist air.

Now west of Waterville, I let the
Queen
drift up to 2,300 feet and alter course twenty degrees or so to the left to hit Livermore Falls. I am paying close attention to the compass and meticulously time-ticking my chart, noting my position at least every five minutes. I have absolutely no intention of wandering through mountain valleys with no idea which valley I am in.

Livermore Falls comes up right on the nose. Off to the right a big pulp mill in Wilton is belching smoke, which the wind is trailing off to the north, maybe slightly northwest. That’s about the same wind I have here at my altitude. I’ve got a ten degree left correction set and I’m making a good ground speed, so the wind is probably right from the south or slightly southeast.

I cross Livermore Falls 55 minutes after I took off from Rockland. Another heading change, this time fifteen degrees left. In three minutes I cross over Canton Point and pick up the valley headed west. The valley has a river—the Androscoggin—and a road in it, and they are easy to follow. Off to my right are mountains higher than I am covered with trees. I can see a cloud coming up off the slope of one of them. That’s the goo that you can’t go under.

Visibility is down to six or seven miles as I pass Mexico and Rumford and continue west up the valley. The Queen’s engine has been balky to start of late, almost as if the mixture is too rich. She catches only as I pull the mixture knob back from full rich. Maybe it’s the low altitude, but funny I didn’t notice that in Louisiana and Florida. Flying now up this New England mountain valley, this thought nags at me and I listen carefully to the engine while I check the oil pressure and temperature and cylinder head temp, then scan the earth below for likely looking emergency fields.

You get in the habit of looking for places to land if the engine should quit. I have never lost an engine in 2,700 hours of flying, but there is always a first time. I imagine the engine will start running rough and coughing before it stops completely, if the problem is a thrown rod or plugged-up carburetor or busted valve. If something catastrophic happens, like the crankshaft breaking or seizing, then it will just quit dead without warning.

That would be a once-in-a-lifetime thrill, I imagine. There’s a terrific scene in the movie Spirit of St. Louis in which Jimmy Stewart’s engine dies abruptly—he runs a fuel tank dry. Only a great actor could make that look of stupefied amazement so real that you know that is exactly how you would feel if it happened to you.

In the Navy we referred to a moment like that as a lummer, a shot of cold urine to the heart. Actually the drug is adrenaline and the quantity is about a quart.

Thank heavens the
Cannibal
Queen’s big Lycoming is humming like a champ. There are few places below that I would want to try to set her down and the clouds above prevent me from climbing higher to increase my options. I am in a valley now with mountains on both sides that are higher than I am.

Passing Bethel I fly through my first spattering of rain. In a moment we are out of it. Visibility improves somewhat, up to ten miles or a little more. I can see the bulk of Mt. Washington rising ahead to my left, and I can make out the peak. So here, anyway, the clouds are above 6,288 feet, which is how high that monster is. From 2,300 feet it looks like an Alp. If the weather were better I would climb up and fly around the peak, just to say I did it.

Abeam of it I catch my first glimpse of the runway at Mt. Washington Regional Airport. I’m ten or eleven miles from there but I give them a call. In less than thirty seconds I get an answer on Unicom: “Winds nil, landing runway 28, right-hand pattern, altimeter 30.07.”

I announce that I will land straight in. The airport sits in a large, relatively flat, forested valley, three or four miles east of the town of Whitefield, New Hampshire. The runway is wet.

I make a fairly decent landing. This conscious look right, then left just before the flare is proving itself very well. Every landing I have made since I began using this technique has been satisfactory or better. Maybe I’m getting the hang of this tail-wheel stuff!

Rain is misting down as I park. I take a squint back toward Mt. Washington but I can’t see it. First one, then three men come out to watch me fuel. They don’t have any Aeroshell 50-weight ashless dispersant oil, but after rejecting two quarts of mineral oil, I find some multiweight ashless dispersant in the FBO office. I buy it and pour it into the Queen.

By now Her Royal Highness has a half-dozen admirers. I’m not jealous. The gorgeous old gal deserves every flirtatious glance sent her way. I’m well aware of the fact that all this attention is a tribute to Skid Henley and his craftsmanship, not to me.

I use the phone to call Flight Service. The weather has not improved. Nor has it gotten worse. Yet for the first time the briefer talks about mountain obscuration. “Patchy,” he says.

The rain is falling gently and steadily. The Queen’s admirers have retreated to cover. I walk around her, looking her over as I meditate on the situation for a minute or two. Then I plunk my bottom in the wet seat and strap in.

The seal on the engine primer is apparently going. Since Florida it has been leaking fuel onto my fingers when I pump it. Now it squirts some. Great!

I leave the mixture knob half open and crank the engine. She doesn’t fire. I prime another couple of squirts, open the mixture full rich, then retard it as I crank. The Lye fires and belches a cloud of white smoke and settles into a steady idle. I think at this altitude you must just retard the mixture knob quickly— that’s the hot engine start technique.

With the wind sock hanging limp, I elect not to taxi the length of the runway to take off to the west. I add power and lift the tail and take off eastward and make a climbing turn. I will follow the highways through the valleys to Burlington, Vermont, on Lake Champlain, then call it a day. This would be the most scenic terrain in the East if I could just climb high enough to see it properly. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. It’s not like I’m really going somewhere.

At Littleton, New Hampshire, I pick up the four-lane headed northwest. This quickly peters out at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and I am left with a two-lane ribbon of asphalt going the way I want to go, southwest toward Barre and Montpelier. Occasionally I have to weave my way around wisps of cloud. Off to my right the mountains are wreathed in mist and heavy clouds. Same on the left.

Darn! These would be great mountains if I could just see them. These are the Green Mountains of Vermont, where Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys hailed from. I read Allen’s biography in the fourth grade, that winter during arithmetic class. Ever since I have had an itch to own a flintlock rifle.

When the Knapp State Airport on top of a hill between Barre and Montpelier comes into view, I am tempted. I am flying in rain, not seeing all the nifty things I wanted to see, the mountains are topped with crud. I call Unicom and land.

Ta da! I have now been to every state in the union except Alaska! I’m sorry, but I don’t want to go anyplace where you have to eat your whiskey and cook your motor oil. Noel Wein was a better man than I. I admit it.

The FBO offered me a spot in his hangar to get the
Queen
out of the rain. I took him up on it. I taxied her straight in. He helped me fuel her there, but he didn’t have any 50-weight oil either. Luckily I had two quarts in the baggage bin that I’d been saving for a rainy day, like this one turned out to be.

Later I visited the National Weather Service meteorological observer in his little office in the terminal. His name was Roger Hill and he looked genuinely glad that I stopped by. In addition to all his weather gear, he had the Unicom radio—this was why the answers to my transmissions were so prompt—and a large black mongrel dog that was asleep on his couch.

I asked Roger when this front was going to be out of here. He said it should be clearing nicely by noon tomorrow. I told him I wanted to go west through the Adirondacks and then southwest along the southern shore of Lake Erie.

“Shouldn’t be a problem tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “But there is another front over Wisconsin and Lake Michigan and it’ll be slowly moving this way. Tomorrow afternoon and maybe the next day you’ll be between fronts. It’ll be hazier on the back side of this front than it’s been here the last few days.”