Yellow Duckies (Flying)

In April 2007 I attended the Australian Women Pilots conference in Mudgee. It was a real eye opener. The conference had lots of interesting speakers, delicious food and ran like clockwork. The one outstandingly memorable event I took part in was the ditching practice in the pool. I'll let you read on.
  

Yellow Rubber Duckies

The programme for Thursday said ditching procedures. I always thought the procedure for ditching was joining the nearest religion when the engine starts to cough over water. I figure any religion will do as long as it has satellite coverage for your present location. A yellow lifejacket, an axe and if your over more than a puddle a life raft will probably assist as well.

 

We were told to bring togs (bathers) so maybe we were going to start with a baptism. John started the session off with a series of slides showing that miracles do happen. Good news stories of people that have ditched and had a God on their side. He pointed out that a large majority of people survive the actual ditching only to die in the water. The lesson, conserve energy and don’t lose the faith. Easier said than done, as I was about to discover. John made a roomful of friends by also suggesting that a bit of body mass was also advantageous.

Next it was too the pulloo (pool). The idea of public displays of flesh may be fine when all the participants are 20 and 50kg but in my older wiser years I wasn’t so keen to have spectators or photographic evidence. Having the local newspaper reporter was pushing my exposure boundaries. I would have hidden but having a bright yellow collar around your neck kind of makes you stand out.

Once standing on the edge of the pulloo we were instructed to pull the ripcord. This went against the norm. I usually put my life jacket on to cross Cook Strait then try not to pull the ripcord. Flying in a cockpit smaller than a 152 there just isn’t room for an inflated lifejacket and a voluptuous pilot. Pulling the ripcord gave me a bit of a start. With a sudden gush of air my neck was encircled by a yellow brace that would have made a bullfrog jealous. Pulling the second ripcord only amplified the problem. Now looking like a yellow bullfrog in togs and completely blinkers from seeing behind me and mostly deaf from ears enfolded in yellow I turned to watch John indicate how to enter the water without torpedoing to the bottom by stepping in legs apart. I watched a formation of ducks land on a pond the next day and they were much more graceful.

 

Thirty odd women with yellow neck braces doing the ministry of funny walks leaping into a small pulloo started a wave of laughter as well as proving Archimedes theory about displacement of water. Some spectators who’d listened at school retreated to higher ground.

 

Now we had to float on our backs and pull our legs up into a foetal position (to conserve the body core heat) and hold that for two minutes. Two minutes was long enough I was starting to get a picture of how hard it would be to stay in that position for hours not minutes. Then we were instructed to form a huddle. We collected together all the yellow floating duckies and formed a circle. A small circle was easy enough but to include the whole group complete with injured people wrapped in large plastic rubbish bags in the centre of the circle just brought on another round of riotous laughter. The process was a bit like forming a Congo line. Being only able to see forward 100 degrees also made collecting everyone difficult. Eventually the frayed ends joined up and we held the circle for a couple of minutes.

 

So now you have a mental image of thirty or so yellow duckies floating about in a small swimming pulloo making as much noise as a bunch of bullfrogs on a rainy night. Add in a few whistles and the noise of the spectators who were falling about in hysteria as well.

With the aid of a megaphone John added the toys into the bath and tried to get our attention. The toys where life rafts, four and ten person rafts. 4 + 10 ¹ 30. John gave us the instruction to enter the life rafts he gave us no clues or hints as to the procedure so there was just a free for all. Arms and legs everywhere. A mass stranding comes to mind with bodies half in half out of the water and the rest in shallow water about to risk a similar fate.

After a lot of splashing John called a halt and told us how it is supposed to be done. Two of us per raft got in with someone holding the opposite side of the raft to stop it flipping.

Then we sat astride the pontoon and dragged someone in. Easier said than done. The two per raft got ourselves in looking like four ducks fishing the bottom of the pulloo floor for duckweed, arses pointing skyward. Once in we grabbed a victim by the arms bounced them three times then pulled them in. Unfortunately some of us were a bit over zealous with the dunkings I don’t think the idea was to completely submerge our victims. I was going for the baptism thing.

With the first person we pulled in one of Newtons law came into play. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. As our victim got pulled into the raft and I exited back into the water. The other law of physics is that when an object is moving it wants to continue moving in that direction. So having got over the edge of the raft it was very hard not to exit out the other end. Only the wall of people already in the raft stopped the forward flow. Getting back in backwards I was just over the edge when someone gave my legs a helpful flick I went in with an unladylike back flip nearly drowning in the water in the bottom of the raft. John finally had us shift from one raft to another. By now we had a handle on the fluid stability. Things were going well until we had six in the four person raft and four in the ten person raft. The smaller raft was about to sink to the bottom when John called a halt. Either his training aids was about to be trashed or he was about to loss one of us to drowning through ingesting water whilst laughing so hard.   

The whole session was hilariously funny. If you missed it find a kid and twenty yellow duckies throw them into a bath together add some yellow whistling bullfrogs and you’ve got half the picture.

 
Much as this was the most fun I’ve had semi-clothed for a long time and the spectators said what they would have done for a video camera. It was a very sobering lesson to think that this was done in a controlled environment. Flat heated swimming pool where we could always reach the side. We were in the company of friends, no broken bones, no unconscious persons, no sharks, and no panic. We used typical GA type rafts, which we spent ten minutes in max. The real thing would not be such child’s play. I for one will be better prepared and in a more positive frame of mind if I ever do ditch my plane.

I am thinking of adding a yellow rubber duckie to my survival kit just to remind me of the ditching procedures session at Mudgee. When they find me they will think I’ve lost my mind but it’ll just be that I am remembering and laughing at how thirty women can dress up in yellow jackets and become instant comedians.

Published Sport Flying Winter 2007