I learned to sail on Alamitos Bay at eight years. It wasn't until I reached age sixteen that I solo's in an airplane. My family was rich in culture, poor in money; no matter, Mother said I could be anything - do anything - I wanted. That gave a lot of confidence to a sickly kid with asthma. As a result I flew for forty-four years; everything from biplanes to the huge DC-10 that carried 350 passengers. There were revolutions in the Congo, wars in Laos, Vietnam, and Desert Storm I participated in as a pilot. Good times - bad times - it has all been the stuff of legend. Sometimes scared out of my wits; other times having more fun than the law allowed - seldom bored. Then there was the sailing. Little boats, big boats, around the bay, across the ocean with the same sense of excitement and adventure that I experienced with flying. Amazingly my China-born wife was at my side as we crossed to Tahiti in Quark, the 29' boat I built. (Something worked; we've been married forty-four years this June.) With the airlines a pilot must retire at age sixty. Since I quaified for a marine captain's license, I changed hats and began a whole new career delivering yachts up and down the Coast between Canada and Mexico. This continued for ten years until the writing bug insisted I put down some of my experiences for others to share. And that, ladies and gentlemen is how I've come to write Sailin' South, Maverick Pilot, volumes I, II, & III, and soon to be finished, my first fiction novel, Keeper of the Secrets - an MIA Laos yarn.
