Pilotage

Hitchhiking used to be a cheap, reasonably effective, and often adventurous way to travel across town and across the country. It isn't done much on the roads anymore, but hitchhiking on light airplanes is still a pretty good way to get there.

I flew to Fort Lauderdale (Florida) Executive Airport on a Sunday morning to hook up with some friends from Dive Training, a monthly scuba-diving magazine for which I do some writing. They were attending Ocean Fest, a consumer dive show in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea. The plan was to attend the show on Sunday, then launch in my airplane early Monday morning for the Cayman Islands with one of the magazine's staffers, Jerry Beaty.

Jerry and I had made the trip before as part of the Cayman Caravan, an annual early June fly-out of about 100 or more aircraft from Florida, south over Cuba, and on to Owen Roberts International Airport in Georgetown, capital of the Cayman Islands. The trip coincides with International Aviation Week on Grand Cayman, the centerpiece of which is two days of aviation safety seminars sponsored by the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism. The event culminates in a Saturday airshow best observed from the vantage point of a raft floating in the warm clear Caribbean water lapping Grand Cayman's famed Seven-Mile Beach.

UPS pilot Ross Russo and Paul Bertorelli, editor of Aviation Consumer magazine, have been running the Caravan for 10 years. They and their volunteer staff obtain the Cuban overflight permits for participants and provide a great how-to guide on making the trip safely and with minimum hassle. Usually, all the participants stage in Key West on a Tuesday evening for a briefing, then fly down in intervals on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. However, Jerry and I wanted to go a few days early to dive world-famous Bloody Bay Wall off Little Cayman, about 70 miles east-northeast of Grand Cayman.

When I arrived at Ocean Fest on Sunday, I met Louis Charland. He is the international marketing manager for a company that manufactures underwater cameras, among other products. Louis had mentioned to someone that after Ocean Fest he wanted to go to the Cayman Islands to test-dive a new version of the company's camera. When he heard that Jerry and I were headed there the next day, he asked if we had an extra seat.

An extra seat is rarely a problem on a long trip in a light airplane. The problem is the extra weight of a surprise passenger and gear. In addition to our dive gear and Jerry's massive travel bag containing magazines and other literature, we had the added weight of a life raft, life vests, several gallons of drinking water, and a few other survival items.

I explained to Louis that weight was the problem, not space, but if he could bring an absolute minimum amount of baggage and I could convince Jerry to shed some of his load, we should have just enough payload left to add him to the manifest. Jerry shed a lot of the 99 pounds he originally had stuffed in his bag. Louis pared his luggage down to one duffel and a modest cardboard box containing four cameras and accessories. Banyan Air graciously agreed to store the extra baggage until we returned. I worked the weight and balance numbers. We were good to go.

I had one other concern about picking up a hitchhiker. I didn't know how much experience Louis had flying in small airplanes, but I was pretty sure he had never spent three hours or more flying over a lot of open water. Louis explained that he often flies with his private-pilot son, and he himself had taken some flight lessons years ago, although he never completed the training. Best of all, Louis is a self-proclaimed adventurer who takes great pride in being flexible, for going with the flow when it is required. Going with the flow is what hitchhiking to distant islands by crossing Cuba in a small airplane flown by a stranger is all about.

Louis was a model hitchhiker. He had no room to stretch out in the cramped backseat. It was hot and bumpy for the first half-hour while air traffic control kept us low to underfly Miami International arrivals. Droning along for about three hours at 12,000 feet over Cuba and the Caribbean, Louis kept us entertained with interesting stories. He picked up his share of the tabs on Little Cayman. And he paid me a high compliment. "I've never felt so confident flying with anyone," he remarked after we took off from the grass strip on Little Cayman bound for Grand Cayman. "This airplane is like an extension of you." So what if he was just being a gracious guest; he could not have done or said anything to greater effect.

Louis parted company with us when we landed on Grand Cayman. He had to get back to the office, so he caught an afternoon Cayman Airways flight. On Saturday morning Jerry and I prepared to return to Fort Lauderdale. I had the FBO fuel the airplane while Jerry returned the rental car, then we both cleared customs and immigration. As we were heading out the door to the airplane, a young man wearing a short-sleeve shirt with epaulets—an Air Canada pilot—strode up and asked, "By any chance you guys wouldn't be going to Key West, would you?"

"No," I answered. "Fort Lauderdale."

"Even better, eh!" he beamed. "Would you have an extra seat?"