Most of you are probably aware of the recent tragic sinking of the sailing yacht, Bayesian, off of Palermo, Sicily. Indications are that it was hit by a waterspout. Reading about this reminded me of an incident in my flying career when I came this close to flying into a large waterspout.
This would have been sometime in the early 2000’s when flying HH60J Jayhawks1 in the Bahamas. Our base, Air Station Clearwater, in addition to having helicopters locally for search and rescue (SAR) and other Coast Guard missions, also maintained at least four helicopters at two bases in the Bahamas, mainly to prosecute The War on Drugs. (We also did SAR there when needed.)
While I did experience some exciting missions while deployed to the Bahamas (a couple of which I’ll sometime write about), a lot of our flights were spent just patrolling–“showing the flag”–around all the islands. On a typical 24-hour shift we would conduct a night patrol and a day patrol. These would be flown to and around various island in the archipelago to look for any suspicious activity and to just let the locals know that we might turn up at any time.
Some of these patrols involved extensive overwater flights between islands–sometimes as much as 200 miles. There was no one out there but us most of the time, no obstacles, no weather except occasional thunderstorms (which our onboard radar could detect in plenty of time to avoid). We flew under visual flight rules (VFR) which meant that we used see-and-avoid to keep separated from other aircraft. Strictly speaking, therefore, we weren’t supposed to fly in clouds, because theoretically there could be an aircraft in it flying under instrument flight rules (IFR), navigating solely by the use of their instruments. To legally fly in clouds required filing an IFR flight plan so that ATC could ensure aircraft separation when the aircraft couldn’t see each other.
In reality, though, in the Coast Guard we often flew in clouds even when we weren’t on an IFR flight plan. This because the reality was that typically we were lower than any IFR traffic was allowed to be, or in locations well off the IFR airways where no IFR aircraft would be.
Of course, we never flew through true thunderstorms because the wind shear forces and hail (and other hazards) could tear an aircraft apart. But rain clouds were fine, and could be easily distinguished from thunderstorms on radar.
So one afternoon my copilot and I were flying a very long range patrol, heading to an island about an hour and a half away, the enroute leg entirely over water. We were flying at around 1,000 feet. He had the autopilot engaged with the aircraft heading directly to our destination. About halfway there, a small green blotch started showing up on the radar directly ahead of us. It was almost circular, and the radar showed it as small, like maybe 1/2 mile in diameter. As we got closer, we could confirm that it was a very small cell that started at about 2500 feet and went up a few thousand higher than that. It was also producing rain which prevented us from seeing underneath it (because if we could have, we would have just proceeded underneath maintaining VFR).
Because this cell was so small, it was something, that raining or not, I would have normally have just flown through. It would have taken about 15 seconds. We might experience a slight bump or two, but nothing more. And, it would give a nice freshwater rinse to the helicopter.
But, because we couldn’t see underneath it, I now had sort of a morale dilemma: You see, I had a very junior, young, new, and therefore impressionable copilot. And, I was relatively senior, a Lieutenant Commander, and also an Instructor Pilot, Flight Evaluation Board member, and had survived a tour in Alaska, so I was like a Coast Guard helicopter god (at least in this young copilot’s eyes). In other words, what I said and did would have a lasting impression on him. We were right on course, everything was smooth, and I really didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of having him disengage the autopilot to fly around this little cell, and then try to get back on course again. Yet, I thought that I should do the right thing (for him), so told him that we needed to avoid the cell, and that he should turn to go around it.
I could tell from his reaction that even in his nascent flying career he had already flown through bigger cells than this without an issue, but he did what his aircraft commander asked him to do, and while still a couple of miles away, he turned to fly around it.
As it passed our beam and we came around to the back side of it, low and behold, on the other side, hidden by the rain, was a HUGE waterspout going like mad, just tearing up the water. It was probably 2500 feet tall! And we would have flown right into it! Had that happened, we would not have survived.
Of course, I said to him, “And THAT’s why you never fly through cells!” He really thought I was The Man after that. In my head though, I was thinking, “Holy shit! Phew!” lol
- The Coast Guard’s version of the Blackhawk at the time. ↩︎