In 1964, the first year I was eligible to vote, Barry Goldwater was my man and, besides, everybody in conservative, Republican, southern Ohio knew he was a shoo-in. Then Jerry Swart came up with a trip to Antigua in the British West Indies over election week and invited me to play copilot in the Beech 18 he was delivering. I was 22 and green as grass with maybe 300 hours flying time. Free multiengine dual in a Twin Beech plus an all-expense paid trip to an exotic Caribbean island and an airline ticket home. Did I want to go? Did Jimmy Doolittle want to go to Tokyo? Did Amelia want to find Howland Island? So I cast an absentee ballot, knowing it was merely a patriotic gesture since Goldwater would score a landslide win. And I spent delicious evenings pouring over ONC charts of the Caribbean, spread all over my apartment's living room floor.
This garden (read: basement) apartment was cheap, five minutes from the airport and even had a balcony ... well, sort of. It was below ground level, like an oversized basement window well. The other unique feature was an old, old gravestone leaning sideways, at eye level, only a few feet from my bedroom window. At first this was a little disconcerting since "we" were sleeping at about the same level.
But back to the Beech trip. A Cincinnati guy named William Cody Kelly had bought a resort called the Anchorage in Antigua, BWI, one of the Leeward Island group. The hotel had a Cessna 195 they used to haul fresh vegetables and meat between Antigua, Montserrat and San Juan until the airplane, pilot and vegetables disappeared in the Caribbean. So Jerry sold Kelly this venerable Beech 18 that hadn't turned a prop in three or four years.
But the logs proclaimed the engines were recently top overhauled and, like an aging prostitute, the old girl looked pretty good from 50 feet in fresh -- if not skillfully applied -- paint.
A good pilot, Jerry looked a lot like Clark Gable in a sharper, more hawkish way ... and the pupil in one of his eyes was curiously cat-eye shaped. He was street smart, canny, an impeccable dresser and, although he came from a little river town east of Cincinnati, could fit himself seamlessly into any social situation. Finally, he was a crack aircraft broker in that hugely competitive business ... little airplanes in the '50s and early '60s, but later into corporate class and business jets. Jerry and I had a volatile relationship; we were, for 40 years, alternately best pals and fiercely at odds.
Extensive flight planning revealed there was an awful lot of blue on those Overseas Navigation Charts with occasional islands and a few low-frequency beacons. And even at 300 hours I suspected that this Beech was less than a creampuff. But, hey, the flight from Cincinnati to Ft. Lauderdale would be a good shakedown. Anyway, who cared! It was a huge adventure. We'd arrive on the island in the first week in November, before the Anchorage actually was opened to guests for the season. But the staff would be in place and Mr. Kelly said we could stay for a night or a week or a month. Food, oceanside cabanas, rum drinks, swimming, sightseeing ... how good does it get?
The week before we left I sat in the Beech with a manual and studied the huge, round ADF azimuth mounted in the middle of the instrument panel and the mysterious switches and dials and cranks that ran it up on the overhead. I pondered the mysteries of homing and tracking, relative and magnetic bearings because low-frequency beacons were pretty much all there was in that part of the world. It was a long, long way between the VOR station at Nassau and one at the west end of Puerto Rico. Jerry said we'd fly from Ft. Lauderdale to South Caicos for fuel and then straight on to San Juan where we'd overnight. Next day St. Johns, Antigua.
"Uh, Jer, what about heading just a little more south from Caicos and flying along the coast of the Dominican Republic and Haiti? It isn't that much farther than going straight out over all that water and we'd be in sight of land most of the way. "
"Seems like a good idea but actually it isn't. See, it would be far safer to ditch in the Caribbean than to go down in or even near those countries. They don't like intruders and it would mean prison at best, cannibals at the worst ... or maybe the other way around. No, the ocean in that part of the world [the Bermuda Triangle] is so full of ships and air traffic we'd be picked up in no time."
Jerry oozed competence and confidence. He knew so much, was so sensible and -- I would learn -- was tighter than the bark on a tree. We would not spend one red cent more than essential on this expedition.
We taxied out from Lunken on a foggy, late October morning. The six passengers who had eagerly laid claim to free seats to Ft. Lauderdale had evaporated, probably after a closer look at the Beech. It was a shame, really, because the flight to Fort Lauderdale was great. We skirted every one of the thunderstorms that peppered our route from southern Georgia through central Florida because that big ADF needle pointed right at them. No, it didn't point at any beacons but once in a while you could hear Morse code through the static and even occasional wisps of talk and music.
"This is working out great, Jer. We know the ADF is no good but we'll be on the ground in Ft. Lauderdale in plenty of time to get it fixed or even have a new one installed tonight, right?"
