Each year in May, our family makes the trip across to the Islands to represent the yard and join in the festivities at the Custom Shootout. We’ve only missed a couple in the 23 years of the gig. Several years ago, we decided that flying charter aircraft made better sense than dealing with the airlines and all that à-la-carte, shake-down nonsense. Why in the hell don’t they just raise the ticket prices and get flying back to the privilege it used to be? Really, folks, flying is not an inalienable right. We now fly with Island Tyme and with an Aztec full of us, the convenience of flying when and where we choose, more than makes up for the slight difference in cost. It also gives me a chance to fly right seat with our friend Alex Bussey, a very talented pilot and the grandson of one of my dad’s best friends. As I focus on that Piper instrument panel and listen to the handoffs from tower to departure and approach, I am reminded of a wonderous part of my life when I was young, dumb, and fearless.

My father was a private pilot. His closest friends were pilots as well. When we were kids, we never missed a chance to go aviating with Dad or one of his flying buddies, Ed Bussey, Frank Reggio, Bud Schooley, and Alicia Como. Dad held his VFR single and multi-engine ratings in land and seaplanes. If the flight plan was going to take us into weather, one of the others in the group who was IFR rated would go along. Ed and Frank were former military pilots with thousands of hours in various flying machines. Ed flew “The Hump” in WWII, one of the most dangerous assignments in all of military aviation. Frank flew the Berlin Airlift, fighters in Korea, and later became an instructor for flight safety. Alicia was a flight instructor, type-rated in corporate jets, and our favorite co-pilot. She was patient and kind with us kids and at the head of the class in instrument flying. Later in life, she gave me my first check ride in complex aircraft (retractable gear and variable pitch propeller) and signed off on my bi-annual flight reviews for many years. To this day, her signature in my old logbook sets me on a sentimental flight path when I think about flying with her. All of them are up there now, touching the face of God. I still look skyward, every time light aircraft fly over our yard, to make sure I can identify make and model while imagining one of that old group, stick in hand, dipping the wings to let me know that yes, there are airplanes in heaven.

In August of 1975 I enrolled in flight school at Tilford Aviation. Tilford was on the south side of PBIA where the old, original commercial terminal once stood. My flight instructor was a guy named Mike Scherer. Mike was a retired Air Force captain, an exceptional pilot, and a gifted teacher. In those days, you could rent a Cessna 172, wet, for $24.00/hour plus the $15/hour that Mike required for instruction. Thirty-nine bucks an hour doesn’t sound like much in today’s money, but I was only pulling down $1.60/hour working at the yard. Dad was excited that I had caught the bug, and the yard stepped in to help when I came up short. Mike and I flew three times a week. He was tough, thorough, and knew just how to get you through what he referred to as “learning plateaus.” I soloed at 7.5 hours. There are no words in any language on Earth to describe the combined feelings of apprehension, freedom, and accomplishment that accompany your first solo flight. After hours of instruction and practice with Mike, three solo cross-country flights, and another solo flight down to Opa-locka for the FAA written, I passed my check ride at 38 hours with FAA examiner Ken Weseman on November 22, 1975. Ken was a big guy. The joke on the ramp in those days was that on your check ride with Ken in the right seat of a 150 with full fuel, you were over gross, and you were supposed to catch that on your weights and balances. If you did, he’d let it slide and off you’d go. If you didn’t, you flunked before completing your pre-flight. My first passenger was, of course, my father. We took off in a 172, a few days after Weseman signed my ticket and flew around the sky for an hour or so. It was a magic moment in time and a rite of passage to sit left seat for the first time, together in the air.

My assignments at the yard would now include flying service missions. My first flying adventure for Rybovich & Sons Boat Works was PBI to Everglades City with a yard mechanic to repair a fuel leak on a 53 Hatteras at the Rod and Gun Club. While Bob Stiles, one of our veteran mechanics, was working on the leak, I was to cut in a NorthStar Loran on the bridge. Bob and I loaded up the Piper Cherokee, in which I had just received a check-ride days before, with tools and parts and took off for Everglades City. The strip at Everglades City was notoriously short. Drop in, full flaps, get her down on the numbers. I didn’t hit my mark, ate up too much runway, and slid off into the grass at the end, standing on the brakes. There ain’t much grass at the end either, before you’re ass-deep in salt water. I got her turned around and taxied to the FBO while Bob completely freaked on me and insisted that the yard send the truck to The Rod and Gun to pick him up. “I am not getting back in this f—ing thing with you!” he screamed, again and again. After about 30 minutes of explaining to him that we would have no such problem landing at PBI, we headed to the boat, made the repairs, and had a great flight home, landing 9-Right (the short one), just before dark. I dined on a course of crow and humble pie the next day at work as Bob informed the entire yard, with justifiable embellishment, of his near-death experience with the boss’s kid.

There were numerous flying assignments after that, all good. In the Fall of ’76, Johnny sent me down to Marathon to pick up a customer, two bent wheels, and a rudder. When I taxied the Archer to the FBO, I saw that the captain and the mate were waiting with the boss man. All three of them needed a ride back to Palm Beach. I ran a weight and balance calculation with the four of us and the hardware aft and realized I was critical on CG. I decided that my uncle had sent me to do a job, and that’s what I was going to do. Not cool. Unicom departure, full power, good roll, rotation at 60 knots indicated, and within seconds, the stall warning horn blasted from the wing. No runway left to put her back down and kick someone off the flight. From the back seat, I hear someone yell, “What’s that noise?” “Nothing,” I shot back. “Ok, fool,” I said to myself, “Get her nose down and pray we can clear those buildings.” The Archangel, Orville Wright, must have been working Marathon that day and we cleared the buildings, out over open water for a slow climb out. On our way home, I asked the guys to reach around behind the seats, grab the propellers, and place them on the floor behind the front seats with their feet on top. I told them I just didn’t want them rolling around the back of the airplane on approach. Little white lies.

In the late summer of ’77, Dad and I flew commercial out to the Beech factory in Wichita to take delivery of his new A-36 Bonanza. The family yard had been sold and N711A was a well-deserved reward to himself for a lifetime of hard work. We flew her back to Palm Beach together in two legs and had a ball doing something we both loved. Within the father/son dynamic, we were closer on that trip than we had ever been. He was so proud of that airplane.

Several years later with weather moving in, Alicia and I teamed up in the boatyard Navajo to deliver Cruise-Air parts to a boat down Georgetown way in the Bahamas. There was a lot going on in the yard that day and I worked till quitting time. We were late on our departure out of PBI, and the sun had begun to set behind us as we crossed the Bahama Bank. We were RDF (radio direction finding) nav to the beacon at Georgetown. After flying around the islands IFR in stormy weather for an hour with no luck on the beacon (turns out it was out of service) and no lights on the intended field, we called it quits and touched down in Nassau for the night. With an early breakfast came good weather and we got a fresh start, VFR in clear skies. We quickly found the illusive airstrip, delivered the parts, and headed home. Oh my God. The jokes began before I got to my work bench. “Sure, Mike. You and Alicia couldn’t find the airport, so you had to get a room in Nassau? The older woman with her young protégé?” Alicia and I were completely innocent, but no amount of gospel truth would silence the gallery. Even Dad was in on it. OK, boys, I get it. Have your fun.

Capt. Mike Scherer told me a long time ago: “Flying is a thinking man’s game. You can’t let yourself get rusty.” I got married in 1985, which officially ended my brief flying career. My wife and I were starting a new life together, building a new business, and were soon to have kids of our own. Our austere finances did not allow for the spiraling cost of flying. In my logbook, my last biannual with Alicia took place in April of that year. Piloting a boat is a “thinking man’s game” as well. If you’re good with hand-eye coordination and are proficient in seventh grade math, you might be a candidate, but you can’t let yourself get rusty. The freedoms you experience out to sea and in the air are sister euphorias which demand respect. The most important factor in piloting each is the ability to pay attention. That disqualifies a lot of people these days in our distracted culture. I can only hope that at least one of our grandkids will catch the bug and pick up the family torch for winds aloft.

This article originally appeared in the November 2025 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.