A Story That's Hard to Believe Continued

I received this e-mail from one of the team members led by Gary Larkins who recovered “My Gal Sal” from the Greenland icecap.  As the story continues it becomes more and more obvious that “Sal” survived all these years and obstacles to keep alive a special day in history.

Name:

A very old & tired, deaf, blind and most certainly DUMB  Air Pirate

From:

A Place In The Arctic

E-Mail Address:

garthor@lycos.com

Website URL:

airpirates.com

Date:

8/1/02

Time:

5:13:54 PM

Just got a chance to check up on your web site. It looks great! I read the story of the parts from San Diego and enjoyed the "FATE" part. I am here to testify that there was a hell of a lot of "FATE" involved with "My Gal Sal". From being unable to remove the engines which were perched ten feet in the air with nothing more than a tripod and come-a-long, giving up at midnight and going to sleep in the tent, then waking up to find that a gentle rain had softened the ice and let the wing slide down the peak it was perched on to the surface where we could get on with the disassembly, to making 28 helicopters lifts out with the parts of Sal and get to the last two pieces, the wing center sections, and find that the biggest helicopter in Greenland could not lift them. We were given one week to lighten the wing sections. The helicopter would be back on Sunday. After that it would not be available for the rest of the summer. Three of us worked around the clock to remove all the fuel tanks and main landing gear without the aid of any equipment and through a blizzard. The main gear alone weighed close to a thousand pounds. The helicopter returned but still could not lift the wing. The pilot wanted to cut loose, I stalled him, I don't know why. There was nothing left to do. Then from nowhere a wind of sixty miles an hour blasted across the ice cap, the chopper was jerked back and the extra lift broke the wing free of the ice. He swooped away, catching our tent on the wing section and spreading our gear across the cap but we didn't care. She was on her way and that was all that mattered.

There are at least a half dozen other events that are hard to explain which made it possible to recover "My Gal Sal". Yea, I guess "FATE" is the right word for it although there was a lot of hard work by everyone involved from the beginning to the present and it continues. Stay with her boys, she’s worth it!