Per advice from well meaning advisors, this entry is entirely fictitious. It involves flying the sheriff out to the island, and turning right around and flying a distraught victim off the island. It is an airplane story only on the basis of center of gravity and freedom of control movement issues.
The control and CG issues were due their only being two seats in the airplane – one for me and one for the passenger. (This was common on freight runs or in a medevac flight when the aircraft was configured into “no seats” mode with all of the seats, except the pilot and co-pilot’s, removed.) But the meat of this story is around all the events that led to the fastest island extraction I’ve ever done.
The drama took place on an island that had a funky upslope runway. You would “land up” from the sea (pointing south) and “take off down towards it” (to the north) typically. It sounds heroic, but is pretty easy and casual when you get used to it. If the wind was really blowing hard from the north, you could bravely land downhill (into the wind) since your actual ground speed could be as little as 10 or 20 mph if you had 40 or 30 mph on the nose.
We’ll call this island Crustaceanicus. There are many such runways off the coast of Maine, but most are unknown, unpublished or no longer used. This one, however, saw use at least three times per day, weather permitting.
