100% Success

14 Months down the runway, I had more than a thousand hours of total flight time and tried to get an offshore job in the pacific, on an island called Guam.

In those days, before the dawn of the world wide web, the fastest way of applying for a job was to fax the application and follow up with a call. They never offered me a position though, saying there were no vacancies.

Anyhow, the thought of the job lingered in my head. I wanted it so badly, I decided to leave the helicopter academy and go to Guam to do whatever I could to land the job.

I told the owner of the flight academy, where I by now had become a senior flight instructor, I had been offered an offshore job on Guam and that I would leave New York in a month's time.

I wasn't in a position to tell anyone the way it really was, knowing that most of them would have told me it was insane to leave a good job, without any guarantees.

Once on Guam, I checked into a hotel and took a taxi straight to the offshore helicopter company. I offered to help out with maintenance and test flights until they had an opening for me and only seven weeks passed till I was contracted to work on a South Korean ship.

I'll never forget the excitement that rushed through me the first time I landed on Sea Hawk Two. I was 21 and the adventure had just begun!