Still Vagging the Bond!

Howdy. So it turns out that sailing isn’t an activity I’ll be satisfied with doing just once. I had a blast learning the basics on the Hunter 30. It had been a while since I’d had someone yelling at me to “Watch your heading!” while I was trying to do three other things. My instructor was a retired pilot and flight instructor with over 11,000 hours in airplanes, so at least we spoke the same language. From camber and angle of attack, to all the navigation stuff, I thought it was pretty interesting how many concepts and terms transfer from flying to sailing. I still felt like I was learning a whole new language while dealing with the sails. I never knew there were so many different names for “Rope.”

It felt great to be out on the water though, and in my opinion, being close hauled and healed over is the most exhilaration you can get at five knots. I kept having to remind myself of how slow we were actually going because it felt like things were happening as fast as on an airplane. The scale and pace of sailing really sank in when toward the end of the day, we were 4 nautical miles from the canal and I realized that it would take almost an hour to get there! Hey, if you want to get there quickly, take a plane.

I feel like I’m sort of back in the real world now. I’m renting my sisters basement in St. Louis while preparing for job interviews. I actually have a couple! My second day on the beach, I got a call from Airnet, a cargo company based in Ohio. Of course, my phone was in the car! I finally had a phone interview with them a few days later and found out last Wednesday that they wanted me to come in for the full interview. Later that day, I was also invited by Westward Airways to go to their base in Las Cruces, NM for an interview.

If I got on with Airnet, I’d be flying cargo four nights a week in a piston powered twin or a single engine Cessna Caravan turboprop. The position with Westward would be Second in Command of a Pilatus PC-12 (nine passenger single engine turboprop) carrying passengers around the southwest.

I really hope I don’t screw up these interviews. I’ve been studying hard and have set up a few lessons in the same model simulator used in the Airnet interview. Westward doesn’t have a simulator and they’re a new operation, so I’m really kind of lost as to how to prepare for that one. The Chief Pilot made it sound like he was just going to look at my logbook and ask about my goals etc. I guess we’ll see.

I still have almost a week before the Airnet interview in Ohio and almost two weeks before the one with Westward. In between the two (on the way from one to the other, in fact), I'm returning to the great state of Texas to see Todd and Cynthia's new (as yet unborn) baby. I'm also looking forward to seeing all of my Fort Worth friends at Josh and Maria's wedding.

You didn't think I'd stop traveling just because I'm unemployed, did you?