Splash and Dash Searey Seaplane Delights
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Posted By: Nickens, Dan
Date Posted: Sep 20, 2019
Description: With the SuRi stuck in port, out island facilities were located for getting the owner and his family away from the marina. The beach at SuRi's supplemental support station provided parking for the SeaRey with SuRi's other tenders anchored just offshore.
Date Taken: August 20, 2019
Place Taken: -17.7607944444, 177.157044444 Malolo Island, Fiji
Owner: Dan Nickens
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Category: Yacht Tending Fiji
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Read what others had to say:

Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    A nice rental home on Malolo worked perfectly as a Plan B to SuRi. The guests were flown out during the day for relaxed recreating. Of course the staff went as well, leaving only a skeleton crew aboard SuRi. At night the process reversed as everyone went back to SuRi.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    There were some complications. First, the tide. It came and went. Fortunately I was close enough to keep the SeaRey from leaving on the high tide. The other complication was sharp rocks. One apparently took a cut at the tailwheel.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Restroom facilities? There was a lot of shuttling between SuRi and the resort house. The bay outside the marina lacked basic comfort options. I had to go looking onshore.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    The shore visit proved to be fortuitous. Taking advantage of the opportunity to check out the airplane I found the tail wheel was flat from its rocky beach experience.

"What now?"

Option one: just fly back to the international airport and don't worry about it. Sure, the SeaRey would be a bit squirrely on landing and running flat would probably destroy the plastic wheel, but I had another on SuRi. The real downside was that I wouldn't be ready for the boss' early flight because I couldn't get access to fix the airplane until after the school's repair shop opened at 0800. (Or about 0800. "It's Fiji time," which, as I found out, is not precise to plus or minus an hour or two.)

Option two: get back to SuRi and fix it so that I could land without worry and be ready to go early next morning.

The afternoon was quite far advanced and I had to be back at the airport before dark (no VFR permitted at night in Fiji). I called SuRi's captain: "I've got a problem with a flat tail wheel and need to get back to the marina to replace it before sunset."

"Standby. Let me work it out with the marina."

Working it out with the marina was not easy. Lots of the big ferry boats were scheduled to leave. The marina wasn't excited by having a "problem" seaplane wandering around when it was busy with boats.

SuRi's captain was persuasive. The marina relented. I was cleared in with two tenders and warned to stay outside the main channel. Well, with the shallow SeaRey draft, that was no cause for concern.

The next problem was that SuRi was surrounded by boats with no access to the crane that could hoist me onboard for an easy repair. Instead I opted for a sandbar near SuRi.

How to jack up the tail to change the tire? No worries when there are lots of young, strong crew available to help. Unfortunately they were all out at the beach house.

What about the ship engineers? They were waiting for parts and were happy to turn to with something that could be fixed quickly. The problem of lifting the tail was accomplished by putting the airplane on its nose and sticking a big fender under the aft hull.

I didn't think about the optics. The SeaRey was on the sandbar in the marina with its nose in the shallow water, tail jutting into the sky. And, of course, it was allowed to be in that position because it had a reported problem.

Well, no worries (at the time) because the wheel was switched out for a new one in short order. I was back in the bay for a quick departure and return to the airport with a few minutes of sunlight to spare.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    After my quick repair I was ready early for the next day. It was a good thing too. The only thing keeping the guests content was that they had access to all of SuRi's toys at the beach house. SuRi's seaplane and helicopter made sure the guests could easily move from the marina to the house. Yes, it was a disaster that SuRi couldn't complete the trip. It was a mitigated disaster, however, because of the aviation assets and hard work of the crew to make all the toys available.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    After the happy guests left for their home, there was still some local work to be done. I got to fly with Mic's buddy. At Malolo he pointed out a Chinese development that had been brought to a screeching halt. The developers cut into reefs and wetlands after getting all the required governmental approvals. What they hadn't counted on was the rebellion of local Fijians. The locals didn't like that they were summarily excluded from their traditional land and the ecological damage the rude interlopers had flaunted. Fijians may be friendly, but they are no pushovers. Under massive pressure from locals and activists, the development was stopped (at least temporarily).

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    I had intended to return to SuRi to pack the SeaRey away. Nature intervened. The wind came up and the first mate decided to postpone the operation. Now I was at the airport with nowhere to go.

Well, I'd never explored the interior of the big island (Viti Levu). Local helicopter operators advertised interior tours including views of waterfalls in the mountains referred to locally as the Garden of the Sleeping Giant. Who could resist taking a look at that!

(Hint: not me.)

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    According to local legend, the Creator was a snake, the serpent god Degei. It's kind of a strange legend because Fiji doesn't have snakes. Anyway, the serpent is said to live in a cave in the inland mountains of Viti Levu (the largest Fijian island where we were operating from). Unlike the Hindu snake god, Kaliya, Degei is a good snake that nurtured and took care of his humans.

No, I did not see any snakes.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Interior colors were not the brilliant blues of the outside islands. California-like tans and grays were the colors of choice inland. Turns out the west side of the big island is significantly drier than the east because of trade winds and mountains wringing moisture out of the air before it crosses over.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    The interior is rough. Not long after my aerial tour, bodies were found in these interior Nausori Highlands. A family was wiped out, including a grandfather, grandmother, their daughter and two of her children.

A one year old baby was found sitting on top of his grandfather. Little Samaira was saved but no one knew how long she had been there. Had she crawled away she could have fallen off a nearby cliff.

Who would do such a thing in a country of such friendly folks? Local gangs? Foreign terrorists?

Autopsies found an ingested “substance” in the corpses. A "witch doctor" and his wife from Christchurch, NZ were detained for questioning. The case was a national story and cause for much concern.

     Attachments:  

Tragedy in Paradise
Tragedy in Paradise

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    After flying over all that hard country, I decided to try out one of Fiji's River: the Ba. I'm pretty sure it was mostly salt where I stopped, so I didn't get out.

That's too bad. I didn’t notice that the new tail wheel tire was flat until I returned from a great day of flying.

I did notice the tower gave me a downwind runway to land on. I was screaming down final in rough air when I decided I didn’t need to have a landing incident just to conform with local aviation customs. Instead I went around and requested a landing on the long, big plane runway that was into the stiff wind.

The tower was nice enough to accommodate the crazy foreign pilot. It was an easy landing until the tail wheel came down and the airplane went all squirrelly. It was difficult to control directionally, requiring power and brakes to maneuver. When I felt the rough rolling of a flat tail wheel tire I knew exactly what was wrong. No way was I going to stop on their A380 runway so I just carefully (and slowly) taxied back to parking while gritting my teeth.

Well, there was another new tail wheel and tire back aboard SuRi. All I had to do was bring it out and install it the next day.

Ba River, Fiji

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    The next morning I came back to the airport and pulled off the one-day-old tire. That’s when I found a wire from the rubber reinforced sidewall sticking into the new tube. I didn’t have time to contemplate the odds of a new tire doing that because I had flying to do.

I did have some time, though, waiting for departure. I was on the taxi way when an Airbus declared an aborted takeoff. It rolled to a stop and shortly afterwards the fire trucks rolled after it. The nose wheel was smoking.

I texted a picture of the downed jet to SuRi: “See, it’s not just Seareys with bad tires.”

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    One would think that such a beautiful sky wouldn't presage an official investigation. It didn't. It was just an omen of an informal inquiry.

The yacht agent called me. "An investigator from the Civil Aviation Authority is trying to contact you. He wants to know about an incident involving the seaplane."

What? I thought I was flying clear and clean. Mostly.

Well, with the ADS-B tattle tale, who knows. Still, who knew the CAA-Fiji would keep a close eye on my flight tracks.

“Um, what incident?”

“Something about the seaplane nosing over in the marina.”

Hmmm….yes, I did that. But, so what? I was thinking more of the flat tail wheel epidemic I'd been dealing with. That had to be it. They probably didn’t care about the Searey, but if the whole airport was a tire hazard zone, then they’d have to investigate.

But, no, it was the Searey nosed over in the marina that got their interest. Apparently the marina reported the seaplane had a problem and was observed to be on its nose. The investigator assumed it had flipped over in the water from the vaguely worded report.

When I explained the mundane reality, the inspector quickly lost interest.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    With the guests gone, I had time to give the crew their chance to fly. I didn't have to ask twice. Suzy and her flying hair jumped in without her camera. She took my phone and went to work.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Although it had been quite a hard struggle for the crew over the past week dealing with a parked boat, and it was a weekend, my flight schedule quickly booked up.

Did they want to go out and look at the lovely, quiet islands? No. They wanted to see the famous churning surf at Cloudbreak. Suzy used my phone to document the SeaRey surf tour.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Cloudbreak is reputed to be one of the best left hand barrels on the planet. The waves did not disappoint. Although there were no surfers out, the curls looked just fine.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    The colors were spectacular, even though the lighting wasn't brilliant.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    What about the risk of flying a little seaplane out in the big surf? Well, there was a safety outlet readily available. The water just behind the reef was flat and just deep enough to float a SeaRey.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Not that the water was calm on the reef. It was disturbed, but flat.

Who knows what lies underneath? The night before I had dinner with a French helicopter pilot and his lovely wife. I remarked about how outwardly friendly the Fijian people were.

"Well, if you stay longer you'll see it's a facade. It hides an ugliness that you can see everywhere."

What? Was I so oblivious?

"Just look at the way they treat their animals. The people don't care for them at all. Dogs and cats run the streets. Horses and cows are hobbled with rope and tied in place all day. It's abominable."

(It was a bit disconcerting to hear her pronounce "abominable" with such a beautiful accent.)

Thinking about it, I saw what she did, though in a different light. True enough that many of the animals were untended and stray. Many were pitiful looking. But, so were the people outside the resort areas. Many lived in shacks and rough hovels. I suspect it's difficult to care about pets when daily living is a challenge.

My dear old mom always said, "Don't criticize others until you've walked in their shoes." Illusion or no, I prefer the memory of "friendly Fijians".

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    The turquoise was vivid even in the subdued light. Suzy made a video of the surfing flight. It's posted on you-tube.

     Attachments:  

SeaRey Surfing Video
SeaRey Surfing Video

    
  
Don Maxwell - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Woo-hoo! That must have been fun, Dan--especially the part from 2:35 to 2:40, where the wavetops are higher than the camera.     
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 21,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Umm, well, er, hmmm.....maybe Suzy dropped my phone? Or could be she has really long arms and was filming from the bottom of the hull? Oh, wait! It's the new iPhone deep dive perspective lens. Cool, huh?     
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Not far away was where the surfers hang out when they aren't surfing. I'm not a surfer so I didn't understand why they were on the beach instead of on the water.

    
  
Nickens, Dan - Sep 20,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Though all the engineers and mechanics had made progress on fixing SuRi's recalcitrant engine, it still wasn't ready to go when I was. That meant loading the SeaRey inside the marina. With a well-rested support crew, it was anti-climatic. Another fine SuRi mission completed, and both the pilot and plane can be used again.

    


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