Waterphobia in the modern age

On Friday my friend Rich asked for a ride up to the Wiscasset airport (KIWI) on the central Maine coast.  He wanted to take his dad and I had already arranged to practice approaches with a CFI buddy so it was fortunate that the Cirrus had only “tab fuel” on board (26 gallons, good for 2.3 hours).  It was an uneventful instrument flight up towards Portland, mostly on top of a layer of clouds at 2500′.  Once on the ground at Wicked Good Aviation we petted the big Black Lab and his 6-month-old puppy friend then borrowed the “courtesy car”, an old Cadillac that would have been called a gas-guzzler until the SUV came along and demonstrated that 18 mpg is not as low as a family car can go.  After chatting with the contractors who are fixing up a house on the peninsula, Rich said “let’s take the boat over across the cove to a restaurant.”  We ferried ourselves out to the boat’s mooring via canoe and had an uneventful trip to and from the restaurant, which is next to an old Civil War-era fort at the mouth of the Kennebec River.  At the end of the boat ride we had to ferry ourselves back from the mooring about 20′ to the beach via the canoe.  I got out on the beach and watched as Rich and my CFI buddy went back to pick up Rich’s dad.  As soon as he stepped from the boat into the canoe the canoe flipped over, dumping everyone and everything into the salt water.


What do three average Americans carry when they are in a boat these days?  Cell phones, digital cameras, etc.  In the 1950s the total cost of this incident would have been a little time to let the clothing and wallet dry.  On Friday the total cost of the electronic items destroyed was closer to $5000.

5 thoughts on “Waterphobia in the modern age

  1. $1600-1700 each seems a bit high: I dunno as I’d call that the standard kit of “three AVERAGE Americans”. Typical maybe, but I’m not convinced that that’s the average yet. I think this party might be somewhat to the right of the distribtuion.

    Even granted that, yes, most Americans now have a cell-phone and a digital camera, I’d say that typically these are one-and-the-same device. Which they got cheap, as part of a package.

    Do “average” people really walk around with more than a hundred-buck phone and a hundred-buck camera? Does an average person wear a watch at all, let alone one that costs over 20 bucks?

    Or maybe I’m over-generalizing from my own experience. (I’ve stopped wearing a wristwatch because so many devices keep reasonable time, my in-pocket camera is a $20 (eBay) point’n’shoot, etc.)

    On the other hand, it’s probably easier to dry out a wallet today, because today, most of the items in a wallet are plastic and not paper.

  2. My own typical kit: $700 digital camera, $400 PDA, $100 watch, $200 cellphone. Salt water wouldn’t hurt the watch, but the rest sums to $1300.

  3. Philip, I always carry a supply of baggies of various sizes in my flight bag. There are many times I have been caught in the rain or went boating (or seaplane flying up at Twitchel’s in Maine) where I simply bagged the sensitive items. Cheap insurance!

  4. You’re story brought back memories of my first flight to KIWI.

    The night before, I flew from Dallas to Poughkipsee to pick up my brother. The next morning everything looked perfect. So, we fired up my T210 and hummed above the long lines of vacation traffic, which were creeping up the coast.

    Then we got to Wiscasset. Or, at least that’s what the Garmin indicated. A change in wind and atmospheric conditions blanketed the area with low clouds and fog. Portland Approach offered what they could – a NDB approach.

    I’ll never forget the strange sensation of descending into the brilliant white clouds and then skimming above the rocky shore and deep green water of the Atlantic.

    After landing, we were treated to a relaxing hour in a couple of Wicked Good’s Adirondack chairs. Just us, a dog and the sweet smell of the pines.

    Priceless.

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