It was the summer of 1986 and I was flying the "dream job". My ship had finally come in. A friend had told me about this ad he'd seen about a job flying in the Cayman Islands. I called down there and talked to the owner, Marjorie Bodden. She and her family ran the charter service in the Caymans. Down there, two families run the island- the Bodden's and the Peterson's (I think that was the name). They also have a rule down there, only one of anything. So there is only one air charter service, and the Bodden's own it. There is only one apartment building, and the Bodden's owned it. Plenty of hotels, but only one apartment building. Seems their son Duane had been killed flying their Cessna 402B on Cayman Brac. He was their only pilot so they needed someone. "Do you have any turbine time?" she asked. I said I had plenty of turbine time, flying Cheyennes and the like. Actually, my total turbine time was about two hours, sitting right seat in a Cheyenne II where I wasn't allowed to touch anything. But what the heck, I really wanted this job. "I'll send you an airline ticket tomorrow." I said I couldn't leave before the end of the week, which gave me just enough time to check with the DEA and Customs to see if they were legit. More on that later.
When I got down there, I discovered their turbine airplane was a Commander 681, N9058N. This was one of the very first turboprops ever made. They had two mechanics, Sid who was a former RAF mechanic now married to a Cayman Airways flight attendant. His assistant was a Jamaican fellow who's name I can't remember. Anyway, Sid said the airplane had "history". On October 4, 1971, it belonged to a charter company in Florida. One of their pilots was having an affair with a married woman and when her husband found out, he chartered the airplane, asking for this particular pilot. On the day of the flight he and an accomplice met the wife at the airport, dragged her onboard and with guns waiving made the pilots take off. They flew around for a while, then the husband told them they wanted to go to Cuba. They landed in Jacksonville and the copilot came out to the FBI with the demand for fuel but the FBI agents told him he wasn't getting back in, they were ending it right here, right now. When the husband saw what was happening he ordered the pilot to start the engines. When he began to do that, the FBI opened up on the airplane with everything they had. The drunk husband killed his wife and the pilot before killing himself (www.58november.com). So later the Bodden's bought the plane, really, really cheap. Now Sid spent all his free time trying to patch all the holes so it would pressurize again.
When I arrived they were waiting on a new left engine. Seems that poor Duane would burn up an engine about once a month according to Sid. I dug around and couldn't find a checklist anywhere. Sid pointed to a large stack of maintenance books and flight manuals and suggested I look there. So while we awaited the new engine from the USA I created new checklists, including power charts and performance data. I studied those manuals like I was cramming for the bar exam. Then a couple of days later the engine arrived. We got a friend with a tow truck to pick up the engine and back up to the airplane. I helped them with the work as best I could. Finally it was all done and as the sun set Sid announced that in the morning we'd fire it up for a test run. I went home to my apartment in their apartment building, ate dinner, then came back out to the airport after dark. With my new checklist in hand I carefully threw switches and set levers and somehow managed to fire up the right engine without destroying it. Well shoot, that was easy compared to some other engines I'd started! On these Garrett 331's you just throw a switch and the rest is automatic. Very pleased with myself, I shut it down and went home. The next morning we started the left engine and it ran fine after a few adjustments. Then the local aviation official, the local "FAA" type person, called me into his office. He told me they had a lot of trouble with this airplane and he would prefer I fly it ten hours solo before I took passengers. I explained my new checklists and performance documents to him, which seemed to give him renewed confidence in our abilities. So I went out to put on ten hours of flight time.
In the Cayman Islands, the wind always blows from the east. Always. So they have one runway, east-west. Except on these two days when I flew the airplane around the traffic pattern for ten hours total, the wind was howling out of the north, a direct crosswind. Sid said it did this like once a year. Lucky me! So I spent my first ten hours in a turbine engine airplane playing Don Quixote with this wind. It was great fun. The engines ran well enough, the airplane never did pressurize and the sixteen fuel bladders (yes, sixteen!) filled through one opening and took over and hour to fill, I kid you not. Half the bladders had been replaced, and the other half leaked so bad that the left side of the plane under the wing was always perpetually wet with Jet-A. We never flew above 10,000' and burned/leaked fuel like crazy, but I was flying a turbine and that was pretty cool. Life in the sunny Caribbean was sweet indeed!
