Yesterday, at Dad's request, I went to to take my Mom, Dad and my daughter flying. We headed to the airport and I went about my preflight routine and Dad went about hooking my tractor to my float dolly, as he always does. It's a good routine, Dad's experienced with tractors, and it gives him something to do while I preflight, besides saving us time. I finished up the preflight and Dad loaded up the plane and headed for the ramp while I closed up the hangar. As I pulled the doors shut I heard a lot of screaming, so I ran for the ramp. When I arrived there I saw, my tractor and Dad, without dolly or plane, parked at the top of the ramp, my daughter and Mom standing beside the ramp, and my plane skimming neatly out into the river. I quickly stripped off all my clothes and swam out to the plane and taxied it to the dock a few hundred feet upstream, I then had to run back through the airport in my gonch (underwear) to get back to the float ramp where it was established that Dad did not lock the hitch closed and did not attach the safety chains. When he made the transition from the flat ground to the sloped ramp the weight shift lifted the hitch off and the plane freely rolled directly down the middle of the 80 foot ramp and launched perfectly. My beaching gear however was now on the bottom of the river. I felt around to the bottom of the wooden ramp (about 5 feet of water) and dove down from there to try to find the dolly in the murky river. No dolly but what I did find is that the river bottom drops very steeply from the ramp. I found a set of parked beaching gear with the keys in it and hangared my plane and went home to do chores, get recovery equipment, and call a diver. No divers wanted to do the job so I welded up a grapple hook in the shop and loaded up a small boat and motor. Dad and I went back to the launch, put the boat in, and fished around with the grapple for maybe 5 minutes until we firmly hooked something in about 25 feet of water and 20 feet off the end of the ramp. We couldn't pull it loose so we decided to tie it to my truck and pull. Lo and behold it was the beaching gear! It pulled out of the river without hanging up on anything, upright, and tongue first, not a mark on it. I hooked it back on to the truck and parked it in the hangar and went home.
Moral of the story. Double check everything, double check everyone who is helping you.

I miss my dad. This would be him 10x over.

And most everything turned out fine in the end.

You might need to translate "gonch" for a non Canadian audience.

Good story, with a good ending.

daedaluscan wrote:You might need to translate "gonch" for a non Canadian audience.

Yeah, because I'm picturing Matt in nothing but an athletic supporter.

Yikes. Gonch in Canada just means underwear.
The real beauty of all this is that seemingly nobody saw a thing and to my knowledge nobody got out a phone and took pictures. Even the recovery of the dolly was so quick that nobody noticed and no crowd assembled.

But, did your Mom get that all on video? If so, it’s worth a fortune on TV!

Great story in any case! There are so many stories that revolve around float flying…..and some are actually funny, though not so much at the time.

MTV

Fraser Farmer wrote:Yikes. Gonch in Canada just means underwear.
The real beauty of all this is that seemingly nobody saw a thing and to my knowledge nobody got out a phone and took pictures. Even the recovery of the dolly was so quick that nobody noticed and no crowd assembled.

I have this fear that when doing anything floatplane-related, EVERYONE is watching. And my usual gaffs, always amplified by the peanut gallery neighbor or the bickering kids, make it so much harder to complete a launch cleanly.

How cold was the water? Please don't report it in inches.

Zzz wrote:

Fraser Farmer wrote:Yikes. Gonch in Canada just means underwear.
The real beauty of all this is that seemingly nobody saw a thing and to my knowledge nobody got out a phone and took pictures. Even the recovery of the dolly was so quick that nobody noticed and no crowd assembled.

I have this fear that when doing anything floatplane-related, EVERYONE is watching. And my usual gaffs, always amplified by the peanut gallery neighbor or the bickering kids, make it so much harder to complete a launch cleanly.

How cold was the water? Please don't report it in inches.

The water was comfortable for swimming.

Personally I miss the days where you could screw up and it would remain private. Social media is bad for that. I'm posting about events here but I wouldn't enjoy having video out with me cussing and swimming after my plane in my underwear. Besides covering up mistakes was fun, and a good bonding experience for the parties involved.

Yeah I get that, but we all would have liked to watch! I've done spectacularly stupid things major prat Falls etc bike crashes etc and it's actually kind of cool if one of your buddies is there to see it so at least it didn't go all to waste.

Yeah I get that, but we all would have liked to watch! I've done spectacularly stupid things major prat Falls etc bike crashes etc and it's actually kind of cool if one of your buddies is there to see it so at least it didn't go all to waste.

Hilarious!! Quite the story for around the campfire.

mtv wrote:But, did your Mom get that all on video? If so, it’s worth a fortune on TV!

Great story in any case! There are so many stories that revolve around float flying…..and some are actually funny, though not so much at the time.

MTV

Nope. Mom is not one to grab for a camera in times of crisis. I'll see if anyone took any pictures, now that everything worked out I'd like some. As it was happening I was too pissed off.

Glad that worked out ok...

It reminds me of comments in a book I have by Dale DeRemer, Seaplane Pilot.

In it he mentions some things you should avoid doing with seaplanes then says...

"usually followed by laughter, but not yours."

Great story! Glad it all worked out OK, some lessons learnt no doubt, but it could happen to anyone

We’ve all got a “ shoulda used safety chains” story. And I use them every time I hitch up now NO MATTER WHAT.

Glad it ended well.

Glad everything ended up ok, not everyone was so lucky. Thomas Lake, I think.

Karmutzen wrote:Glad everything ended up ok, not everyone was so lucky. Thomas Lake, I think.

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Yep. That's Thomas Lake, probably yesterday. Fort Langley's 180 that's been on the bottom since last summer's heat wave (so about 15 months). Nice plane with the Norland engine mod. The helicopter flew it right past my farm yesterday afternoon. Apparently Don Bradshaw owns it now so it'll be at Pitt.