Rmack
Van Allen Belt Sunbather
Hi,
This is about some time that I spent on the "Diana" which used to be the "Mission Into Time" vessel "Enchantress" I think it was called. It was an 80' (or so) steel hulled motor-sailer. There was a model of it in the Flag lobby when I was there in '79-'80.
I was at flag after leaving the Sea Org. I still did not know about OT3 or any of the upper level stuff, and still thought that going up the bridge would help me achieve my main goal of being able to "exteriorize" at will.
I had been contacted by a young women from flag with the offer of paying off my "freeloaders debt" to ASHO at the rate of $10 an hour by doing renovation work. I was promised high quality room and board and $35 a week "engineer" pay, and no more than a 40 hour work week. All of this was reneged on at some point in the six months I was there. Even the paying of the debt was apparently not going to happen, according to someone from ASHO who contacted me, saying that Flag had no authority to promise that. Typical Sea Org horse shit.
Anyway, I was lifting weights in a corner of the parking structure that had a workout area when I was approached by this old estates guy who had an office in said structure nearby. He asked me if I had any sailing experience. I said very little in small dinghies in the Oceanside CA harbor. Good enough, he said, and soon I was flying to North Carolina to catch a bus to Beaufort, NC where I was to rendezvous with an Australian public who had bought the boat and was sailing it to Clearwater to do NOTS
I got off the bus in Beaufort, to find that there were no motels or anything. And no Diana at the waterfront docks. I approached a Police officer in a 7-11 type store and told him my predicament. He gracefully offered to drive me to a town a few miles away that did have a motel. Not much chance of that kind of assistance from a cop nowadays, huh?
Turns out this guy and his partner were sky divers, and being a hang glider pilot, I was a fellow "air junkie". We hit it off, and they offered to take me on a jump in a few days.
On the way to the motel, they get a radio call about a man with a gun back in Beaufort. This seems bizarre, but I shit you not, I found myself in a 100 mile and hour drive back to Beaufort with the cops actually telling me that if shooting starts, I could have the shotgun.
Now, I wouldn't blame you if you find this hard to believe, but I swear to God, that's what they said. They were very young adrenaline junkies and I think I stumbled upon the most exciting call they had had in a long time. Luckily, when they got to the scene, no one was around and all was quiet, so back we went to the other town to the south to drop me off at a motel. That was when they offered me the sky-dive, I believe. We were bonded at that point.
It got weirder after that!
The next day I took a taxi back to Beaufort. I was walking with my duffel bag when I see the Diana sailing down a channel towards the harbor. I recognized it from the model back at the Flag lobby. I thought they were headed out to sea, so I'm running, waving like a maniac trying to get their attention.
They pulled into the waterfront docking, however, and I reported aboard.
The story was that two other Sea Org members had quit after going through a killer hurricane where the boat had it's steering smashed and had to get towed back by the Coast Guard. They said it took hours just to get a line from them for the tow.
After being on board for a few days, I started to think there might have been other reasons.
As I mentioned in one of my other stories, The most "SP" type people I have ever met where higher level OT's. This Australian turned out to be a vicious bully. I never endured so much "razzing" and invalidation in my life!
We were in port for a few days undergoing repairs and resupply. It seemed like I was a great asset to the crew. I was told to read a book on Ocean survival and put together a large ice chest full of supplies to survive losing the boat at sea to supplement the life raft with scant supplies that he already had on board. When he found out I was a certified diver, he had me rent diving gear and clean barnacles from the hull. None of this spared me the mental haranguing.
This was purportedly the boat that Hubbard did the original OT3 "research" on. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but that boat was a living hell sometimes.
I also had some great times. Drinking way too much beer in a dock side bar over 300 years old, listening to a bagpipe player and such. Although I had been told by the estates guy that I would be getting "wog wages", the Australian had the idea that SO members worked for room and board, and got no pay, so I supplemented my dwindling funds by helping other boat owners with small projects. I was swinging back and forth a good 50-60 or more feet from a bosun's seat at the top a mast installing a radar one time.
I never did meet up with the cops for skydiving. I showed up outside a restaurant they said to meet them at, but I was a couple of minutes late and didn't see them, if they had been there.
When we finally got underway to Charleston, we all had two four hour watches a day in groups of two and I didn't interact with the crazy owner as much. I became the default cook, frying up fresh caught fish for everyone and what not.
When we came into Charleston, the old alcoholic captain the guy had hired broke the drive shaft shifting into reverse trying to get that heavy pig docked. He became the target of the owners vitriolic tirades for a while.
We where there for over a week getting a new drive shaft made and installed. When we left Charleston, something was wrong. the variable pitch prop was not doing what it was suppose to at different settings. We went back to port and I was sent over the side in more rental diving gear to inspect the prop.
I have nearly a hundred hours in Cessnas and even a few in a Beechcraft Mentor that has a constant speed prop, so I know what I'm talking about. I insisted that the prop was not at the proper angle of attack. At high pitch, it was actually at a negative angle of attack, and at what should have been a low pitch-sort of a low gear setting-it was at a huge almost flat to the water angle. I was invalidated, but I held my ground.
Finally, the owner decided to dismiss everyone, and he gave me a bus ticket back. I had to argue with him for a few bucks for food for the three day journey. Realize that this guy was a millionaire!
Back at Flag, this guy approached me a few days later and said that I was right about the prop and offered me a position on the crew for a treasure hunting trip. This was the second time I'd heard about people trying to duplicate what they thought Hubbard had done, and recover sunken treasure located by past live memory.
Well, there was no way in hell that I was EVER getting on board a boat-basically a set of rooms you can't leave-with this asshole again, so I declined.
If you read Bent Corydon's book (I saw Bent at Flag at the time trying to get his mission back, or something) "LRH Madman or Messiah", somewhere in the final chapters it mentions a guy drowning while diving for a rich Australian on a treasure hunting expedition.
There but for the grace of God go I!
This is about some time that I spent on the "Diana" which used to be the "Mission Into Time" vessel "Enchantress" I think it was called. It was an 80' (or so) steel hulled motor-sailer. There was a model of it in the Flag lobby when I was there in '79-'80.
I was at flag after leaving the Sea Org. I still did not know about OT3 or any of the upper level stuff, and still thought that going up the bridge would help me achieve my main goal of being able to "exteriorize" at will.
I had been contacted by a young women from flag with the offer of paying off my "freeloaders debt" to ASHO at the rate of $10 an hour by doing renovation work. I was promised high quality room and board and $35 a week "engineer" pay, and no more than a 40 hour work week. All of this was reneged on at some point in the six months I was there. Even the paying of the debt was apparently not going to happen, according to someone from ASHO who contacted me, saying that Flag had no authority to promise that. Typical Sea Org horse shit.
Anyway, I was lifting weights in a corner of the parking structure that had a workout area when I was approached by this old estates guy who had an office in said structure nearby. He asked me if I had any sailing experience. I said very little in small dinghies in the Oceanside CA harbor. Good enough, he said, and soon I was flying to North Carolina to catch a bus to Beaufort, NC where I was to rendezvous with an Australian public who had bought the boat and was sailing it to Clearwater to do NOTS
I got off the bus in Beaufort, to find that there were no motels or anything. And no Diana at the waterfront docks. I approached a Police officer in a 7-11 type store and told him my predicament. He gracefully offered to drive me to a town a few miles away that did have a motel. Not much chance of that kind of assistance from a cop nowadays, huh?
Turns out this guy and his partner were sky divers, and being a hang glider pilot, I was a fellow "air junkie". We hit it off, and they offered to take me on a jump in a few days.
On the way to the motel, they get a radio call about a man with a gun back in Beaufort. This seems bizarre, but I shit you not, I found myself in a 100 mile and hour drive back to Beaufort with the cops actually telling me that if shooting starts, I could have the shotgun.
Now, I wouldn't blame you if you find this hard to believe, but I swear to God, that's what they said. They were very young adrenaline junkies and I think I stumbled upon the most exciting call they had had in a long time. Luckily, when they got to the scene, no one was around and all was quiet, so back we went to the other town to the south to drop me off at a motel. That was when they offered me the sky-dive, I believe. We were bonded at that point.
It got weirder after that!
The next day I took a taxi back to Beaufort. I was walking with my duffel bag when I see the Diana sailing down a channel towards the harbor. I recognized it from the model back at the Flag lobby. I thought they were headed out to sea, so I'm running, waving like a maniac trying to get their attention.
They pulled into the waterfront docking, however, and I reported aboard.
The story was that two other Sea Org members had quit after going through a killer hurricane where the boat had it's steering smashed and had to get towed back by the Coast Guard. They said it took hours just to get a line from them for the tow.
After being on board for a few days, I started to think there might have been other reasons.
As I mentioned in one of my other stories, The most "SP" type people I have ever met where higher level OT's. This Australian turned out to be a vicious bully. I never endured so much "razzing" and invalidation in my life!
We were in port for a few days undergoing repairs and resupply. It seemed like I was a great asset to the crew. I was told to read a book on Ocean survival and put together a large ice chest full of supplies to survive losing the boat at sea to supplement the life raft with scant supplies that he already had on board. When he found out I was a certified diver, he had me rent diving gear and clean barnacles from the hull. None of this spared me the mental haranguing.
This was purportedly the boat that Hubbard did the original OT3 "research" on. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but that boat was a living hell sometimes.
I also had some great times. Drinking way too much beer in a dock side bar over 300 years old, listening to a bagpipe player and such. Although I had been told by the estates guy that I would be getting "wog wages", the Australian had the idea that SO members worked for room and board, and got no pay, so I supplemented my dwindling funds by helping other boat owners with small projects. I was swinging back and forth a good 50-60 or more feet from a bosun's seat at the top a mast installing a radar one time.
I never did meet up with the cops for skydiving. I showed up outside a restaurant they said to meet them at, but I was a couple of minutes late and didn't see them, if they had been there.
When we finally got underway to Charleston, we all had two four hour watches a day in groups of two and I didn't interact with the crazy owner as much. I became the default cook, frying up fresh caught fish for everyone and what not.
When we came into Charleston, the old alcoholic captain the guy had hired broke the drive shaft shifting into reverse trying to get that heavy pig docked. He became the target of the owners vitriolic tirades for a while.
We where there for over a week getting a new drive shaft made and installed. When we left Charleston, something was wrong. the variable pitch prop was not doing what it was suppose to at different settings. We went back to port and I was sent over the side in more rental diving gear to inspect the prop.
I have nearly a hundred hours in Cessnas and even a few in a Beechcraft Mentor that has a constant speed prop, so I know what I'm talking about. I insisted that the prop was not at the proper angle of attack. At high pitch, it was actually at a negative angle of attack, and at what should have been a low pitch-sort of a low gear setting-it was at a huge almost flat to the water angle. I was invalidated, but I held my ground.
Finally, the owner decided to dismiss everyone, and he gave me a bus ticket back. I had to argue with him for a few bucks for food for the three day journey. Realize that this guy was a millionaire!
Back at Flag, this guy approached me a few days later and said that I was right about the prop and offered me a position on the crew for a treasure hunting trip. This was the second time I'd heard about people trying to duplicate what they thought Hubbard had done, and recover sunken treasure located by past live memory.
Well, there was no way in hell that I was EVER getting on board a boat-basically a set of rooms you can't leave-with this asshole again, so I declined.
If you read Bent Corydon's book (I saw Bent at Flag at the time trying to get his mission back, or something) "LRH Madman or Messiah", somewhere in the final chapters it mentions a guy drowning while diving for a rich Australian on a treasure hunting expedition.
There but for the grace of God go I!
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