The last flight I made in my 1953 Piper Pacer, N3323A, was on April 20, 2016. The airplane was in Vancouver, Washington, for its annual inspection before a planned trip to Alaska, and I took advantage of a Portland work layover to take a good friend and his two young boys on a scenic flight. It turned out that sometime during our two-hour tour, perhaps while we were circling Mount St. Helens, the engine began quietly tearing itself apart, eventually dropping a sizable piece of main bearing into the oil pan—all the while running smoothly, indications in the green. I didn’t learn of our close brush with fate until a few days later when the Pacer went into the shop. Within a few weeks, I sold it as-is, where-is, and to my knowledge it has not flown since.
It was a sad end to an adventure-filled 18 months of ownership, but in reality that chapter was closing anyway. Dawn and I were selling everything to buy a sailboat and run away to sea. This too turned out to be a grand adventure, one that lasted nearly five years. We had but one regret during that time: our near-absence from general aviation, and especially the lack of an airplane of our own. Dawn particularly felt the void; I at least had work flying to halfway scratch that itch. We determined to build our post-boat life around a return to general aviation, and accordingly, bought a lot on a grass airstrip west of Seattle and planned the build that is now underway. The only question that remained was what kind of airplane we would purchase, and when.
