Over the Sea by Edwin Davidson

The Last four weeks have been really short and long at the same time if that makes sense.  Short because of how busy we have been, long because it was the longest time that Laura and I have been away from Each other.

Laura departed Dunlap TN on the morning of September 18^th to drive down to Miami and fly out on the 20^th to Georgetown Guyana. They would be on the same flight as Joy Ash and their two girls. The plan was for me to join James Ash in the Cessna 182 that Todd Anderson had purchased for the work in Guyana. We thought that the plane would be ready, and we would leave really close to the same time as the ladies. Well… it didn’t happen that way. I received word that Laura and Kathryn had arrived safely in Guyana. The next morning I got a call from James…the plane is no where near ready to leave and the mechanic is going on vacation for two weeks and he says he has about 4-6 weeks worth of work to do on it when he gets back. That means that 6-8 weeks before the plane is ready to fly south!!! WHAT!?!?!?! My heart sank. My sweet heart  is in another country and I haven’t even been to that country. I took comfort knowing that she was at least with Joy Ash who has lived in Guyana for the last 10 years. I knew that Laura and Kathryn would be ok. That Wednesday afternoon James called me and said “Can you get over here to Collegedale and help us. "I Spoke with Steve Wilson (our A&P/IA mechanic and pilot from Bolivia) and he is spending time with family in Atlanta. He can be here in the morning to do the annual inspection.” I grabbed my things an stuffed them in the back of my GMC Jimmy and headed out. As soon as I got my stuff dumped in a room at the GMI quarters, I raced over to the hanger to help open up inspection panels on the plane so Steven could start with everything open. Steven worked in earnest the Thursday Morning. By Friday he had most of the inspection complete. Many things needed to be done. Darren Lea (a mechanic from AWA) and Tom Meigan came and helped resolve issues. We worked hard 10-12 hour days trying to get all the fine details ironed out and the plane ready to go. Interior panels needed to be put back on the walls and ceiling. new Vinyl lettering on the wings and pilot's door. the plane had to be weighed to get an accurate picture of the weight and balance. The next Friday we pulled the plane out of the hanger and Cas Anderson fired up the engine. It ran!!! But the oil pressure didn’t look right.

At first there was no pressure then… 150 PSI!!!??? the engine was shut down. After a bit they tried again 150 PSI again. Normal is about 30-50 PSI. Steven found the adjustment on the oil pressure regulator and got the pressure down but now there was an oil leak on the back of the oil pump which is located on the back of the engine about a 1/2” from the firewall. We closed down and got ready for Sabbath. Sabbath night Steven went to the hanger and tried til 3 am to fix the leak. Sunday am we had a dedication service with Cas and her church family. Afterward Tom and James fired up the engine, the leak was still there. Monday James and Tom pulled the engine loose to get to the pump better and also took off the propeller to make working on it easier. I ended up making a run to the Sensenich propeller shop in Gainsville GA to get new prop nuts and an o-ring. The nuts and o-ring are one time use. They got it all put together by Tuesday night, Wednesday am they tried the engine, it leaked just as bad as before. Now what?!?! After talking with and engine re-builder and the particulars of this engine they tried again and got it  mostly together by Friday afternoon. They finished up Sabbath night. Sunday morning they tried the engine again. NO LEAK!!! The cowling was buttoned up and James flew it for an hour for the first part of the break-in of the new engine. Then He took Cas and the two kids up for about 30 minutes after that. It was a clear day but the wind was something else. Turbulent remnants of the the edge of Hurricane Matthew. He set the plane down and said we would try again on Monday. Monday while we were eating breakfast we were talking about the list of things that needed to still happen before we took the plane South to Guyana. One of them being that the Transponder and the pitot/static system had to be pressure checked and certified, no problem just take it to the avionic shop at the Chattanooga airport and they would have it done, right? They were booked til Thursday…

I told them our situation he said “get it over here and we’ll work it in today” Praise the Lord!!! It also meant we wouldn’t be flying the plane for the day like we had planned on but we would have that check done. Monday afternoon they called… “there is a leak in the static system and we are having a hard time locating it and your transponder is…dead. The transponder would be expensive if not impossible to repair due to the age of the unit, a good used one would be the next option but it would likely have the same issue soon and that would be $1000. The next option would be a new install of a much newer unit $1500 the next option was a brand new unit with the New ADS-B options that are required by 2020… $6500 we opted for the on in the middle that is a very good Garmin GTX 327 that can have the ADS-B added to it later.  They finally got it installed and the static system fixed by Wednesday. All said and done after all the work of locating and fixing the leak in the static system and the certification of both systems and the install of the new transponder $2500. We weren't sure how we were going to pay for it and have money to put gas in the plane to take it south. We prayed about what to do. The Lord provided through a donor who asked what the bill was and stated that she would cover the bill. "We need to get you boys on your way to your families." We got the plane and flew down to Cobb County airport where we were met by a rep from Stophungernow.org.

He had supplies for us to take down to Haiti with us. Thursday we spent a lot of time trying to get stuff sorted in to piles to load in the plane and load into barrels to ship later. Darren and James worked on making sure everything and every body was Instrument Current. We finally left Collegedale at 9:00 at night and flew to homestead Florida. There we picked up a full refuel and headed out across the ocean. James flew for the first bit while I slept. Just about the first crack of dawn I woke up and took control of the plane so James could sleep. This is one of the nice features about airplanes is the dual controls. You don’t have to pull over to switch drivers.

 We arrived in Port-a-Prince Haiti about 10:15.

Cleared customs and tried to contact ADRA in Haiti to deliver the food supplies to. No such luck. We tried to taxi over from the International terminal to the General Aviation ramp. We sat there for 25-30 mins with the engine turning trying to get permission to move. “9-1-1-3-Mike Hold your position” was always the response. It was like everybody was trying to move at once. Planes landing, Planes taking off, Military helicopters from the UN, Marines, Navy, and the army coming and going, an Osprey tilt-a-rotor came in. It was kinda like you see on the news.

We finally got to move over to the GA ramp and found the MAF Hanger where we could try and make contact with ADRA personel. The MAF personel were very helpful and shared their Airconditioned shipping container office with us while we worked. We took on fuel so we could make the trip to Puerto Rico as soon as ADRA was able to collect the food supplies. Finally we figured out that they were at the airport but couldn’t figure out where we were. Once that was resolved and they made it through with a van to pick up our load, James went a filed our flight plan. He was gone for quite some time while I stayed with the plane. Marshallers on the ram kept asking me

to move the plane here or there to make room for other

planes coming in. Finally a dejected looking James returned to the plane. “eAPIS has not cleared us to re-enter the US. I have tried two more times to file another eAPIS. Still nothing, all we can do is wait. It will be best if we can park over at the GA ramp to wait. Back at the MAF base we kept checking the email hoping and praying for a response from eAPIS. Eventually the time came when single engine night operations were not allowed. We were officially stuck for Sabbath. We tried to make contact with ADRA again to see if they had any suggestions. While we waited for a response a field director was on the phone. When he hung up he was almost in tears. He had 14 people in a certain valley that were in need of serious medical help. There was no runway near them. The only way to get to them was with a helicopter, and he couldn't find one that was available.
Soon they went home and closed the office. There went our method of trying to contact anybody in Haiti. Now where to sleep… with the folding seats in the back we thought that would work. As we were piling everything in the front seats with flash lights an man came out and asked what we were planning to do since they were expecting us to leave right away. We told him the story with the eAPIS. “you can’t sleep here.” He said. “come inside you can sleep on the seats in the terminal” Well that is better than nothing and might work quite well so we grabbed out backpacks and headed into the terminal. We made ourselves comfortable. I was almost out when a security guard came in yelling something in French. I started and sat up, he motioned for me to lay back down as he kept yelling and continued on around the corner. I re-positioned. About an hour or so later someone else was yelling and clapping his hands. I sat up. There was another security guard with a man in a suit. The man in the suit had an ADRA pin on his lapel. “we can’t let you sleep here when you have come to help us. Come with me.” “What happened? We lost contact with you” he said. We told him how we had been over at the MAF Flight base but they had closed for the evening. And we had no other options for internet. “You come sleep comfortable” he put us up in a hotel within walking distance to the airport.

After a good night’s rest we tried again to file the eAPIS to Puerto Rico. They accepted it this time to the airport on the east end instead of the west end of the island. We had to cross the boundary at 4:00 pm. I was able to give a brief report over Skype to our church in Owasso Oklahoma for Sabbath School before we left the hotel. We re-positioned our things in the plane and made sure that all was in order. Several Church members in Puerto Rico had collected food goods that needed to come back to Haiti and were waiting on us. While we waited for our time to depart Haiti we talked with several of the MAF operators and learned more of the situation. How badly we want to just stay and help with the med-evacs and food drops that needed to happen. We could have stayed and worked for 6 months. The need is so great. Our time to depart came and we left Haiti to Puerto Rico. We were considering staying in Haiti for a couple of days but when we got to Puerto Rico James received word from Guyana that several of our missionaries out in the bush were running short on supplies and would be out by the time we would be arriving in Guyana Monday night. We had time to just make the one run on Sunday. Early Sunday morning we made our way to a church member’s house and a church community services building and picked up food goods and bottled water, about 200lbs worth. The gentleman we were staying with took us to Sam’s and loaded us up with another 300lbs. We had a full load. We loaded the plane and verified that we had been accepted both on the outgoing and incoming eApis so we wouldn’t be stuck again.  This time the run was uneventful and we made good time. Back to Puerto Rico we went. Early Monday morning we loaded up our things in the plane and took off for Grenada about 5.5 hours out and a good fuel stop. Looking at the GPS it was going to be tight to make the fuel stop and get to Georgetown. Guyana Civil aviation does not allow Night operations with a single engine aircraft. After the one hour fuel stop we climbed up to altitude and looked at the ETA. Not good. It was showing about an hour after sundown… now what? We started praying for tail winds. So far we had been bucking head winds the whole way. Still the head winds persisted. How were we going to make it in time? I looked at my watch 3:30?? James looked at his watch. I kept the course lined up while He started to scribble down some numbers. The numbers didn’t add up. He did the math again, same answer. He took the controls while I fiddled with the GPS. AH-HA that was the problem the GPS was set to Atlantic Time which was an hour ahead. Guyana in on Atlantic Time but only when Daylight savings is not in effect… once I had the time corrected it showed the ETA to be right at Sundown, whew!!! We were going to make it! We landed right on time with the sun just dropping behind the horizon. We cleared customs and looked for a place to park. There was space next to 8704T, the other plane in the fleet. It is so nice to hug Laura and Kathryn again.

Georgetown Guyana

As James put it the adventure is only beginning for our little family here in Guyana. Please continue to Pray with us for the ministry here in Guyana and also for Haiti as the struggles for survival are only beginning.