Amazing, True Story and Lessons

Approach, March-April 2004

Survival at Sea

By PR2 Ronald Beermnder

The Coast Guard puts the life expectancy for swimming in
59-degree-Fahrenheit water at less than two hours. It's called
hypothermia: Abnormally low body temperature, with slowing of
physiologic activity.

Recently, I was asked to create a PowerPoint presentation for a guest
speaker to use in sharing her water-survival story. I had heard bits and
pieces of her story, which happened over 20 years ago, but I did not
know enough about the incident to do a presentation. All I knew was
"some 22-year-old woman had crashed her plane into the water and lived
to tell about it." Now she was coming to NAS Pensacola to share her
inspirational story with our new flight students.

I needed to do some journalistic investigation, or my PowerPoint efforts
would suffer miserably. I called the guest speaker, whom I never had
met, and asked her some questions. After several telephone conversations
and seemingly endless e-mails, I knew more about the story. As I heard
her story unfold, I couldn't help but think what I would have done in
the same situation. Listening to her gentle voice telling horrific
details of the crash, in her matter-of-fact tone, left me feeling
inadequate and cowardly. Here is the story of Cathy Maready's survival
at sea.

It was November 1981, a pitch-black, moonless night off the coast of
South Carolina with an air temperature barely 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cathy had spent the last three hours on Lady Island completing her final
scuba class for certification. Instead of driving the 45 minutes home,
she opted for a 15-minute Cessna flight. To save time, Maready decided
neither to file a flight plan nor to use her radio. She took off from
the small, uncontrolled airport on Lady Island and headed home.

She described the shine of the stars and the silence of the night to be
one of the most beautiful experiences she could recall. Three miles from
shore, the night grew more silent. The engine of her Cessna 152 had
stopped hard and fast; the blade refused to turn. With more than 942
flight hours under her belt, a restart was routine to Maready. However,
several attempts to turn over the engine failed; it had seized. She
quickly prioritized procedures: aviate, navigate and communicate. She
began her stalled descent and flawlessly landed the plane on the
Atlantic Ocean. The communication would have to wait until sunrise.

"It was like landing on a pee-wee football field. It was short, and
there were no lights. In order for me to land and take off, a local
sheriff, who was in my scuba class, lit up the air strip with the
spotlights from his patrol car.

"My first and immediate concern was landing the plane without
cartwheeling into oblivion. I lucked out with a smooth stall above the
water, and I was able to keep the plane level and the nose slightly up,
as I plowed into the water."

She landed so smoothly the planeÕs emergency-locator transmitter (ELT)
was not activated. Manual activation of the ELT would have required a
journey to the rear storage compartment of the plane. With the cabin
slowly filling with water and aviation fuel, that just wasn't going to
happen. Maready tried several times to retrieve her dive gear, but the
bag was lodged in the tight storage space behind her seat. Less than 30
seconds later, Maready was treading water as she watched the red beacon
light of her tail rudder spiral deeper into the dark abyss.

Without a flight plan, without radio contact, and without a flotation
device, Maready started swimming west, using Orion's Belt to guide her
toward shore. The weight of her wet clothes felt as if they were pulling
her under. Deciding to swim to shore rather than drown, Maready removed
her shoes, her clothes, and even her wris****ch, which she could feel
creating drag against the 59-degree-Atlantic current. It was 2200, and
the tide was not in her favor. Her two-mile swim to land now had tripled
against the outgoing tide. In the darkness, she barely saw her hands in
front of her face. Thoughts of South Carolina's coast being second in
the number of shark attacks only to Florida did not comfort her, and
hypothermia was beginning to attack her body.

"Gradually, my body began to shiver. As the shivers worsened, I noticed
my hands were becoming gnarled and stiff. I made myself keep moving,
forced myself to keep up the swimming movements, but, even as I
continued, I could feel my toes crossing, my feet arching and cramping
into grotesque, fixed positions. It was my body, and what was happening
to it terrified me."

Cathy Maready couldn't stop the thoughts of death from entering her
mind, but she refused to give up the will-to-live.

"I thought it might be nice if I spent a little bit of the time I had
left to say goodbye to my family and loved ones. I believe most people
in survival situations would tend to cherish these times. For me, it was
time well spent. As I was saying my good-byes, the water around me began
to warm. My whole world began to seem warmer. It was invigorating just
to think about my loved ones. I gained new energy, and my arms began to
move again, very slowly, but still moving."

As Maready kept swimming, hallucinations of search boats, rescue
helicopters, and sea monsters started to replace the darkness and
silence of the night. She was exhausted but continued swimming, with the
hallucinations beckoning her to stop. She wanted to stop and yell for
help, but the mere thought of stopping made Maready feel as if she would
sink like a stone. She decided the next time she would stop swimming was
when someone pulled her out of the water or when her feet touched the
sand.

With what she describes as angels pulling her arms forward through the
water and a renewed faith in her heart, Maready eventually reached
shore, a grueling seven and a half hours after the crash.

"Finally, even as I mentally was preparing myself for death, I felt it.
My knees were hitting a sand bar. I knew what it was, but I was too numb
to stand. Almost ready to cry, knowing how close the shore was, I was
forced to swim around the sand bar, out into deeper water, to reach dry
land. Agonizingly, I kept going. My faith was pushing me; it was pulling
me, carrying me to shore. It was daybreak before I made the beach. I
still can hear the oyster shells cracking under my weight. I still can
see the blood flowing from my cuts, but, at the time, I was too numb to
feel a thing."

Maready was found staggering along the beach, suffering from shock and
severe hypothermia. She spent the next three days in intensive care.
When she recovered, specialists were called to review, in amazement, her
medical charts. Chemicals in her body had built up so high from exertion
they literally were off the scale. Three days later, she was released
from the hospital.

Cathy Maready is now a successful interior designer in North Carolina.
This past August, she shared her survival experience with flight
students, flight surgeons, and survival-training instructors at the
Naval Survival Training Institute (NSTI) and Naval Aerospace Medical
Institute (NAMI) in Pensacola, Fla. Her survival story captivated the
audience. She described the sequence of events before and after the
crash, and she showed photos of her plane wreckage as recovered by a
fishing trawler two years to the day after the crash.

Every aviator who hears her survival story will remember it as one of
strong character, deep faith, and an incredible will to live. The
lessons learned never will be forgotten. NSTI has offered Cathy an open
invitation to come back to Pensacola and share her story again. NSTI has
displayed a framed storyboard in its main-lobby exhibition area
dedicated to her story and to her honor, courage, and commitment.

Cathy Maready has graced the Navy with her story. Perhaps the Navy could
lure her back to speak again by fulfilling her lifelong dream: an FA-18
flight with the Blue Angels.

NSTI postscript: Cathy Maready's story, while certainly amazing, also
has some valuable survival lessons learned for all aircrew. Here are a
few of those lessons:

- Be prepared. Don't rely totally on your will to live; rely on your
training.
- Attitude. Remember, it can happen to you, and when all else fails,
your will to live just might be your best asset.
- Knowledge. Know your survival procedures cold. You should be prepared
to react, and you want your reactions to be good ones based on proven
survival procedures you've practiced.
- Wear proper clothing and equipment. Bring an exposure suit and a life
preserver when the situation dictates.
- Have proper survival equipment. Include a life raft, an
emergency-position-indicator radio (EPIR), and signaling equipment.
- File a flight plan. If nobody knows where you're going, you won't be
missed. It's going to be very difficult to find you, when and if they
finally realize you're gone.

PR2 Beermnder is a test and evaluation technician (human performance and
training technology), at the Naval Survival Training Institute.

Wow, what a story!

One quibble:

[...]
She began her stalled descent and flawlessly landed the plane on the
Atlantic Ocean. The communication would have to wait until sunrise.

"It was like landing on a pee-wee football field. It was short, and
there were no lights. In order for me to land and take off, a local
sheriff, who was in my scuba class, lit up the air strip with the
spotlights from his patrol car.

"My first and immediate concern was landing the plane without
cartwheeling into oblivion. [...]

The middle of this seems to describe the field she took off from. If a
sheriff drove into the Atlantic Ocean to light up some waves with spotlights
from his car for me to land on, I think I'd just click my heels three times and
say "There's no place like home". There's something missing or misplaced
here (and that paragraph doesn't really follow from the description of her
takeoff because it describes a landing).

Jose



--
(for Email, make the obvious changes in my address)

In article , jsmith wrote:
- Wear proper clothing and equipment. Bring an exposure suit and a life
preserver when the situation dictates.
- Have proper survival equipment. Include a life raft, an
emergency-position-indicator radio (EPIR), and signaling equipment.

I routinely fly across the water - it's impossible to fly cross-country
here without having to cross a significant body of water.
We have lifejackets designed to be worn whilst flying, and also carry a
4-person liferaft.

Ditching is very survivable if you can get yourself out of the water.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

I think she should get the F 18 ride...

Dave


On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 03:35:09 GMT, jsmith wrote:

Approach, March-April 2004

Survival at Sea

By PR2 Ronald Beermnder

The Coast Guard puts the life expectancy for swimming in
59-degree-Fahrenheit water at less than two hours. It's called
hypothermia: Abnormally low body temperature, with slowing of
physiologic activity.



SNIP

I have been thinking ever since the following incident happened in
December about posting it, and the original post of this thread
prompts me to do so. I do this not to take away from the original
post, which is a beautiful story, nor to offer any lessons to learn,
for I know of none.

Rather, I post this to offer a little tribute to a pilot who meant a
great deal to a friend of mine. An acquaintance and his wife died
Sunday in a plane crash and so this serves also to remind myself that
there, but for the grace of God, go I.

From http://www.utilityaircraft.com/kelvinstark.html

Kelvin's Last Flight The first production PAC 750 XL bound for the US
departed Hamilton, New Zealand, under cloudy skies, and set course to
Pago Pago (American Samoa) on December 23 NZ/December 22 US,
distance, 1850 miles.

Ferry pilot Kelvin Stark departed Pago Pago the next morning and made
the next stop in the Northern Hemisphere, on Kiritimati (Christmas)
Island, distance 1600 miles.

He called from Kiritimati (Christmas) Island, giving us an update on
his planned ETA, commenting that the plane was a dream. We would love
it. Sorry, he wouldn't be here for Christmas, but would call again
from Hilo (Hawaii), distance 1200 miles.

He arrived in Hilo the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and spent that
night and a lazy Christmas morning resting in Hilo. The usual
departure from Hilo is around 5:00pm local time, guaranteeing a
daylight take off and climb. The short tropical sunset would soon
plunge him into darkness.

He called around noon on Christmas day, the weather looked good, a
front had passed through California and there was a predicted tailwind
of about 8 knots. He said he would call prior to departing, and was
flight planning for a 14 hour flight. By now he had flown very long
overwater legs, and had a firm understanding of the aircraft's
performance, commenting that it was going better than predicted. The
2300 miles from Hilo to California was what Kelvin called "The Big
Ditch."

With 800 US gallons of useable fuel on board, Kelvin could stay
airborne for over 18 hours, more if he really needed to stretch
it. While four hours seems like a lot of reserve, Kelvin was acutely
aware of the possibility of weather changes, perhaps the need to
divert around a thunderstorm, and the possibility of a wind shift.

I received a call from Kelvin's wife, April, at around 5:00 PM
Hawaiian time. He was on his way.

Once level at his long range cruise speed, he would top off the
aircraft tanks from the ferry system, establish contact with Oakland
Center on the HF(High Frequency) radio, and settle into the familiar
routine of fuel management, communication, and flying.

It's a quiet place, the Pacific, at night, alone.

Kelvin might occasionally make a blind transmission on "Guard" (121.5,
the distress VHF frequency which everyone on this route monitors) to
get weather information from opposite direction traffic.

The smooth hum of the engine would have been unwavering. If there was
a hint of moonlight, and he bothered to look, he would have seen an
atmospheric distortion caused by the heat of the exhaust.

He might turn on his CD player, orchestrating some phantom orchestra
that was assembled just through the windshield, right there, on the
cowl. He would be checking in at invisible waypoints, with improbable
names like Barts, Cluts and Cleo, to name a few.

He would stay hydrated from many bottles of water, as he sat in his
bright orange survival suit, designed and proven to keep you alive for
12 hours in freezing water.

But something went wrong on this routine trip. Somewhere in the small
dark hours just before dawn, a nagging seed of doubt began to grow,
make the heart beat in his ears, send the eyes through a complete
scan, make him wide awake, feel hot, cold, sweat.

At 4:28 am Pacific Standard Time, Kelvin contacted United Flight 48,
outbound from Maui to the mainland. It seemed he was low on fuel, and
declared an emergency. UA 48 relayed the information. The US
Coastguard was notified, the crew assembled, waited for precise
coordinates, departed and set a course from their base in Sacramento,
California, to GPS coordinates hundreds of miles off the coast.

Over the subsequent hours he was in contact with several commercial
flights, and had listened to their suggestions, and had tried
them. The airline crews, some former mechanics, pulled together to
help this man in trouble. He had Center call me, and in the pre dawn I
went through the aircraft manual, suggesting a couple of
things. Nothing helped.

The USCG C-130 was in radio contact long before he could see it. In
the interval between establishing radio communications and visual
contact, the situation was discussed, options considered and decisions
made. It was a tremendous comfort, beyond words, to see the big white
Hercules approaching fast, the throttles fully forward, emitting four
long trails of smoke.

When the C-130 reached him, he had about 15 minutes of fuel remaining.

In thousands of hours of ferry flying, this was going to be a brand
new experience. The Coast Guard crew and Kelvin had discussed the
ditching procedure. The waves were not too bad, there was a cross
swell wind, but in general things looked good. Approach speeds and
directions were discussed, what to expect throughout the ditching, the
need to stay calm and oriented. Kelvin would soak the information up
like a sponge, but staying calm was what Kelvin did on a daily
basis. Joked about his predicament. A question from a commercial jet
gave Kelvin and everyone a moment to pause, step outside the
immediate.

Was there anything he wanted to tell his wife? He pondered a moment
before replying.

Kelvin opened the crew doors at about 1,000 feet. This was to insure
that the doors would not jam if the fuselage twisted during the
landing. The bright yellow, red and blue plane looked funny with the
gull wing doors open as he continued the decent, the Hercules staying
with him as far as it could. He flared just above the water and would
have had an airspeed of 30 to 35 knots, still well above the stall
speed at this light weight. He held a nose high position allowing the
great big, high lift wings, to generate the maxim lift, slowing his
forward speed still further. The main wheels touched just prior to the
nosewheel. The nosewheel touched, dug in, and the aircraft flipped
easily onto its back, settling on the water with the wings on the
surface, in a slight nose down attitude, upside down. It was a
textbook landing, perfectly controlled and flown like the professional
he was. No one could have put that beautiful new plane down better.

Somewhere in this moment, Kelvin Stark passed away.

The US Coast Guard crew made several passes, dropped a raft, and began
a four hour loiter. They were heartbroken. If you spoke to Kelvin for
2 minutes, you felt like an old, trusted friend. It would have been a
bitter pill to take to be that near, and yet not see Kelvin's head pop
up from under the aircraft, with his sly smile.

Another USCG C-130, an Air National Guard C-130 and a HA-60 helicopter
had been dispatched. Under worsening sea conditions, rescue swimmers
found Kelvin still strapped in. By now the plane was lower in the
water, and removing Kelvin had to be weighed against the safety of the
rescue team.

It was determined to be very risky, and the attempt to recover Kelvin
was abandoned.

As the C-130 crew made their last orbit and pass, the plane had
settled in the water with only a portion of the tail exposed.

Kelvin Stark, 58, from Tauranga, New Zealand, began yet another
journey, only this time, he left no flight plan. He will be looking
out for his friends and all those who came to his assistance in his
hour of need.

Note:

In October, 2003, Kelvin flew the prototype PAC 750 XL from Hamilton
to Mojave, Ca, and back. I estimate he accrued almost 100 hours of
flying during that 14,500 mile trip. On that ferry, I flew with Kelvin
from Honolulu to Davis, California. Some of the above I have first
hand knowledge of, some I have gathered from speaking with those
involved, and some I have deduced. I may have some things wrong, but
they are correct as I know them now. At the time of writing, an
accident investigation is being mounted. Like all accident
investigations, it will take time. Facts will be gathered. Hopefully,
at the end of it all, we will have learned something. However, we may
never know exactly what went wrong for Kelvin.

Kelvin is survived by his wife, April, and 3 children by a previous
marriage:

Ascinda (Cindy) Stark, 28 years old. Residing in Scotland, she is an
Architect.

Regan Stark, 23 years old. Residing in Scotland, he is a Rugby player.

Cameron Stark, 19 years old. In NZ, a student studying sound
engineering.



Philip Esdaile
Utility Aircraft Corporation

Ride? Just throw her the keys and tell her to bring it back when she's done.


wrote in message . ..
I think she should get the F 18 ride...

Dave


On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 03:35:09 GMT, jsmith wrote:

Approach, March-April 2004

Survival at Sea

By PR2 Ronald Beermnder

The Coast Guard puts the life expectancy for swimming in
59-degree-Fahrenheit water at less than two hours. It's called
hypothermia: Abnormally low body temperature, with slowing of
physiologic activity.



SNIP