AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2012 - 85

heard of parachutists landing in open water cutting their chutes away while hundreds of feet over the surface because they thought they were about to touch down. That kind of mistake can be fatal. I lost my primary avionics at around 5,000 feet. I hadn’t thought about it, but our glide time exceeded the life of the twin batteries, and my backup gauges didn’t include a vertical speed indicator. I could have established a constant-rate descent at a given airspeed, but I wanted to hit tail-first at the slowest possible speed. I planned to stall it in. As we descended through 5,000 feet I began calling out our altitude in thousands to warn Marcelo. I had taken my headset off, and we were able to communicate without an intercom. At 1,000 feet I turned parallel to the swells and told Marcelo to open the top half of the door and prepare for impact. I wanted to hit tail-first in a full stall, and we did, but I think I flared a bit high. We hit hard. I was aware of only one impact. Marcelo later told me there were three. I had a pretty good size lump on the side of my head. I think the initial impact knocked me out momentarily. When I turned to the rear of the airplane I saw the life raft was partially inflated, inside the airplane, and Marcelo was trapped in his seat. Working together we got the raft out of the airplane. By the time I got out, Marcelo was drifting rapidly away. He’d told me the day before that he wasn’t a strong swimmer, and while he had inflated his life preserver and was holding on to the side of the raft, he was unable to get in. I wanted to grab some gear and maybe secure the door; I think the airplane might have floated a long time. It appeared to be intact, with the exception of the elevator, which was torn off. It had hit tail-first. Instead I jumped in and swam to my copilot and the raft. I got in, and went to pull him in. We immediately capsized. I tried again, more cautiously, and we were in. The three-man raft barely held the two of us and with the waves occasionally breaking over us, the raft was more like a bathtub full of water. I estimated the height of the waves to be running around six feet. We were down. We were alive and had minimal injuries. We congratulated
www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 85

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - August 2012