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By Capt. Bill Pike December 2004

Service tech Mark Litschauer drove into the parking lot behind Signature Flight Support at Florida's Orlando International Airport feeling nervous. His boss at Sea Rays Sykes Creek facility in Merritt Island had called an hour before, just about the time the police motorcycle escort joined the cavalcade on Orlando's outskirts. The boss had apologized, but had been firm; he was staying with his wife at the hospital until the baby was born. Young Litschauer would have to handle things by himself.

We are talking a very tall order! As the pickup truck Litschauer and I were riding in passed through a security checkpoint onto the tarmac behind the Signature building, three big, shiny 18-wheelers pulled right in behind us one carrying the lions share of a new, shrink-wrapped Sea Ray 600 Sun Sport on a cradle, the second carrying the 600s hardtop, and the third carrying an assortment of paraphernalia related to overnighting the boat to Mallorca, Spain.

Yup, believe it or not, the Sun Sports owner expected to take possession in Europe within hours of the yachts departure from Orlando and zoom off on a Mediterranean vacation. Moreover, Sea Ray had been entrusted with more or less organizing and coordinating the whole deal, a not-insignificant task, even for one of the largest boatbuilders in the world with contacts galore overseas.

Who was this owner? While the individuals name and other pertinent info were being withheld in the interest of privacy, there was one thing for sure: He or she simply had to be a tad flamboyant. Think about it: How many folks do you know who have had their very own 48,000-pound boat shipped across the Atlantic next-day air?

Check it out, Litschauer said as we pulled into the shade of one of the largest commercial cargo aircraft in the world, a Russian-built Antonov An-124-100. We got out of the truck and stood there examining the craft as the 18-wheelers strategically positioned themselves nearby and the sirens of the police motorcycles faded into the distance. Its four engines were immense; each one seemed as big as a suburban tract house. The cargo bay, with loading points forward and aft for roll-on, roll-off service, was also immense; the place seemed as big as a football field. And finally, the nose assembly was enormous, too; in the upward-swung mode, its windshield panels towered two stories above us.

Overnight Sensation

By Capt. Bill Pike December 2004

Litschauer and I drew closer. The 124s crew was assembling a prefabricated loading ramp they had extracted from the interior, complete with rails and a special flatcar with hooks for winch cables. Litschauer dove immediately into the job he would be doing the rest of the day: helping maximize the efforts of a half-dozen truckers, a couple of supervisory types from the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based freight-forwarder Penalpina, several rough-and-ready heavy-equipment guys from local crane-rental company Beyel Brothers, and well over a dozen Russians who comprised the planes crew, most of whom spoke little English.

I ambled over to a member of the latter group, a dark-haired, heavy-set fellow named Tcherepanov Serguey, who wore black Bermuda shorts, black work boots, white socks, and an I Love Australia T-shirt soaked with sweat. The conversation that ensued was fascinating, despite the gestures and facial contortions necessary to facilitate it. The crew, Serguey explained, lived on the ship, ensconced in quarters above the cargo bay. On call at all hours, they performed their jobs for months on end as the huge airplane hurtled the globe, from one place to the next, one job to the next, much like seagoing tramp freighters of yore. Stints of R&R at home in Russia and comparatively high wages were the reward.

The Beyel boys arrived midafternoon. After some preliminaries, two big cranes each hoisted a giant, 1,000-pound spreaderbar aloft, with a 60-foot, four-ply sling hanging down. With painstaking care, the slings were looped under the hull of the Sun Sport (twin cradle attached), and a safety checklist was performed.

All seemed ready, except that a smidge of Cold-War-type rivalry broke out. It began when one of the Beyel guys climbed the boom of one of the cranes and planted an American flag. Shortly thereafter, perhaps because I was viewed as a neutral member of the press, one of the Russians ran over to me and began yelling above the deafening roar of the engines, which had just started. Where was the generator he'd been promised, he demanded? Why did he have to use his engines to provide electrical power for the winches that would pull the flatcar and boat into the airplane? America huh! he opined.

Overnight Sensation

By Capt. Bill Pike December 2004

One of Beyel's riggers counterattacked. He ran over and complained about the Russian's silly obsession with the nearness of the cranes to the airplane. These Russkies don't understand nothing he charged, which is one of the reasons why our country's number one and theirs is not.

Fortunately, the whole world loves ice cream. The welcome spirit of detente soon descended upon the project thanks, I'd say, to a brief lunch break enlivened by free Klondike bars, courtesy of Signature Flight Support. Then, at approximately 4 p.m., the two cranes began lifting both the boat and cradle together, slowly and simultaneously, eventually positioning them on the ramp or rather on the flatcar poised to roll up the ramp into the cargo bay. The delicacy required was spellbinding. Basically, it involved three guys from Beyel: two crane operators and one rigger who was hand-signaling both. Toward the end, head honcho Super Dave Mandich turned to me and announced proudly, Guess you figured out by now, the word drop just ain't in our vocabulary.

One final burst of excitement came about 6 p.m. Litschauer and I stood together watching as the Russians slathered the rails with grease and began slowly and carefully winching the Sun Sport into the airplane. At the halfway point, however, an awful question began to assail the assemblage: Had either Polet Cargo Airlines (the owner/operator of the 124) or Sea Ray made a ghastly miscalculation? From the vantage point of the crowd on the tarmac, it looked like the highest part of the boat-cradle combo was not going to make it!

All was well, though. Eventually a loftier vantage point, gained by dispatching a lookout to poke his head through the shrink wrap near the high port, produced a collective sigh of relief. The cargo bay accepted the Sun Sport with the calculated clearance: two inches.

The Antonov hit the trail for Spain not long after. Right on schedule.