Swimming to Catalina

49

Stone and Dino drove down to Santa Monica Airport, a small general aviation field with a single 5,000-foot runway, near the beach and just next door to Los Angeles International.

“What are we doing here?” Dino asked as they pulled into a parking lot behind a large hangar.

Stone found the sign he was looking for:AIRCRAFT FOR RENT. “We’re going to do some aerial sightseeing,” Stone said. “I want to show you the layout of where we’re going, and it’s the fastest way.”

“What’s the hurry?” Dino asked.

“This weekend that yacht will be full of people. I want to get to her first. Wait here.”

Stone went into the office, passing a large sign offering various airplanes for rent, and inquired about rates from a young man at the desk. He produced his pilot’s license, his medical certificate, and his logbook on request.

“What sort of airplane do you want?” the man asked.

“Something slow for sightseeing.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Just out to Catalina and back. A couple of hours.”

“I’ve got a Cessna 172, a nice one-good radios, GPS. It’s IFR certified, and it’s a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, wet.”

“I won’t be doing any instrument flying, but it sounds fine.” Stone gave him a credit card to imprint, then followed him out to the hangar.

“Let’s see you preflight her,” the man said.

Stone walked slowly around the airplane, doing the checks he’d done a hundred and fifty times, including the fuel.

“That’s pretty good without a checklist,” the man said.

“I did my initial and a lot of my instrument training in a 172,” Stone explained. “It’s all in my logbook.” He helped push the airplane out onto the tarmac, then the man handed him the keys.

“Go safely,” he said. “I’ll look for you back before the fuel runs out.”

“Thanks,” Stone said. He went back to the car and got Dino. “This way,” he said, and led the way back to the airplane.

Dino looked at the little Cessna with concern. “It’s kind of little, isn’t it?”

“A very sturdy aircraft,” Stone said. “More of them produced than any other; think of it as a kind of Volkswagen Beetle of the air.”

“I always hated those little cars,” Dino said.

“Hop in the passenger seat.”

Dino climbed in, and Stone got the seatbelt on him and fitted him with a headset, then walked around the airplane and got into the left seat.

“Where’s the pilot?” Dino asked.

“You’re looking at him.”

“Now, wait a minute, Stone,” he said. “I know you screwed around out at Teterboro for a year, but that doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere with you in the pilot’s seat.” His protests were drowned out when the engine roared to life.

“Don’t worry about it, Dino; I’ll get you home safely.” He ran through the pre-taxi checklist, then called the ground frequency for a taxi clearance. He was told to taxi to Runway 21.

“You’re sure you can do this, Stone? I mean really confident?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve got something like two hundred hours in this airplane.”

“This same one?”

“Several just like it.” He pulled onto the runup pad at the end of the runway, revved up to 3,000 rpms, checked the magnetos, the oil pressure, and the temperatures, then called the tower. “Ready for takeoff on Twenty-one, VFR departure to the west.”

“Cleared for takeoff,” the tower controller replied.

Stone taxied onto the runway, eased the throttle all the way forward, and released the brakes. They were off the ground in less than a thousand feet.

“Where are we?” Dino asked.

“Open your eyes, and you’ll see,” Stone replied.

They were crossing the beach now, and they could see the dim outline of Santa Catalina Island in the smoggy distance.

“That’s where we’re going,” Stone said. He leveled off at a thousand feet. “Watch for other airplanes; we don’t want a collision.”

“Acollision?” Dino cried.

“Help me avoid one, okay?” He consulted the chart to stay well out of the Class B airspace surrounding LAX. “Down there is Marina Del Rey, where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately.” He dipped a wing so that Dino could see out the left side of the airplane.

“Don’tdo that,” Dino said through gritted teeth.

Stone pointed out another light airplane off the coast and made a course adjustment to avoid it. “That’s what I was talking about,” he said. “Watch for more.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dino replied.

They flew along for ten minutes without speaking while Catalina grew larger in the windshield. Stone pointed again and put the nose of the airplane down. “Look at that,” he said.

“The big boat?”

“Let’s get a closer look.” He descended to five hundred feet and flew past the yacht on a parallel course.

“Her name isContessa, ” Dino said.

“That’s the one we’re looking for; she’s on her way back from Marina Del Rey to her mooring off Catalina.” The yacht was slowing now as she approached the anchorage, and Stone circled. “See all those little things floating in the water? Those are empty moorings. They’ll be full this weekend, so tonight is a better time for us to go.” The yacht slowed, and a man in a small boat drove up to her mooring and tossed a rope onto her decks, where it was received by another crew member.

“Two aboard,” Stone said. “One at the helm.” As they watched, the man in the small boat turned toward the harbor and went away. “The skipper told me he could run her with a mate when the owner isn’t aboard.”

“Well, it’s a very nice boat,” Dino said. “Can we go back to land now?”

“Look at the anchorage; I want you to have a good idea of where we’re going when we come back here.”

“Yeah, yeah, I see it, now let’s get back to land, okay?”

“There’s a life jacket in the back seat, in case we have to put down in the water.”

“Just shut up and get me back to land,” Dino said.

“All right, we’re done. Aren’t you enjoying the flight?” They hit a patch of bumpy air, and Dino clung to his seat.

“Not much,” he said. “Get me out of here.”

Stone turned back toward Santa Monica and tuned in the recorded weather information. When they were ten miles out, he called the tower. “I’m a 172 approaching from Catalina for landing; I have information bravo.”

The tower came back. “Enter a left downwind for Twenty-one; you’re number three for landing after a 182 and a Citation.”

Stone entered the traffic pattern as the other Cessna landed. “I have the Citation,” he said to the tower.

“Keep the Citation in sight, cleared for landing.”

“Jesus, will you look at this city,” Dino said, at last seeming to appreciate the view.

“Yeah. There’s LAX, where you landed, right over there; the tall buildings are downtown L.A., and over there on that hill you can see oil wells.”

“They have oil wells in a city?”

“I think the oil wells were there first,” Stone said, “and nobody’s going to shut them down until they’re dry.” He turned at right angles to the runway, then turned onto final approach.

Dino was finally taking an interest in the flight. “You found the airport,” he said.

“It’s easy, when you’ve got all these instruments.”

“And there’s the runway right in front of us.”

“Where it’s supposed to be.”

“Look at all the cars; they look like hamsters.”

They flew across the road at the edge of the airport, and Stone set the airplane down lightly and taxied off the runway. A moment later they were stopped in front of the hangar, and he shut down the engine.

“Hey, that was fun!” Dino said. “Let’s do it again sometime.”

Stone burst out laughing. “Come on, let’s call Rick and see about that boat.”