December 27, 2025, sunrise from the duck blind at the Coastal Club, Bell City, Louisiana
With every new year I can jokingly look at myself in the mirror and self-deprecate that I am old, grey and have a little more paint chipped off than the year before. That is also how I would have described my first “girlfriend” – also known as N739SB. Seabiscuit, as she was known to all of the local renters, was a 1978 Cessna 172N that was my primary trainer for my Private Pilot’s License. She was well used and not very pretty to look at, but she got the job done for current and aspiring pilots that flew her. I’m not sure if the moniker was simply because of her tail number or because, like the horse in the movie, she wasn’t very pretty. She was never destined to win any awards like the real Seabiscuit, but she did perform her primary job for many years and for many would-be pilots.
Some of my favorite flying memories occurred while sitting in Seabiscuit’s left seat. Unfortunately, Seabiscuit died December 23, 2019, at 3:30 p.m. local time when a renting pilot attempted a go around after a botched landing and struck a tree. Luckily the pilot and passenger only suffered minor injuries, but it was a great airplane’s last flight. Those of us who flew her mourned her loss.
For almost thirty years, our post-Christmas routine is the same. My brother-in-law, my father-in-law and I go duck hunting with friends in the south Louisiana marsh while my wife hosts her sister and her children and her mom’s house. After the hunt, the cousins leave and we pack up and travel somewhere for the new year’s holiday. On my last flight every year, I take a thick sharpie and draw a solid line across my logbook to separate the current year from the one coming up. The solid line helps me identify different years when flipping back through logbooks. And yes, I still use a physical logbook (see T & T article September 2025.) This year, after adding my last flight of 2025 to Alpine, Texas (E38) into my logbook I decided to flip back to some of my earliest flights and reminisce. And there she was – Seabiscuit strutting proudly across the pages.
Seabiscuit took me to what some people would think of as ordinary places, but back then they were all magical to me because I was in the air. I had several years of flying under my belt, I had passed my instrument check ride and I was doing a lot more cross country flying than pattern work.
Late in 2013, a friend asked If I could assist in getting some pictures for a book he was writing. He needed some ariel shots, and I was more than happy to oblige him with his request. Afterall, it was another chance to fly for a little while. The author, Richard B. Crowell, was an amateur author writing his first book as a passion project on the history of the hunting club where he grew up hunting ducks in the south Louisiana marsh. This is the same hunting club where I have been lucky to be invited after Christmas for the last 30 years.
Initially, Mr. Crowell simply wanted to document the history of Louisiana’s oldest continuously operated hunting club. During his research, he decided to broaden the scope to include discussions of the history of the Chenier Plain (pronounced CHEN-EAR). The Chenier Plain is defined by Mr. Crowell as “geologic formations found only in Southwest Louisiana…It’s wetlands are strategically positioned beneath the Mississippi Flyway, the most prominent migratory highway in North America.” In Chronicling the history of this “duck club” the book explores how hunting is intertwined with the people and economics of the southwest portion of Louisiana and its marshes. It further traces the histories of the Louisiana duck clubs and their role in stewarding resources to protect the vital Louisiana marshes that are home to such vast ecological wonderlands.
The book, published in 2015, is a beautiful biography of the land and people who made up this area of Louisiana from its earliest settlers. There are hundreds of photographs of the region, its duck clubs, the members and guides of these clubs and the tools they used to navigate the marshes. There are sketches of the mudboats, maps of the marsh, the guide’s piroguss and the lodges at some of the clubs.
In 2014, Mr. Crowell was wrapping up his book and needed some ariel photos of the south Louisiana marsh and a couple of the duck clubs in the area. Interestingly, his son is an accomplished pilot and could have taken him to do the photography himself, but at the time he was flying a Columbia 400. His son’s plane was too fast, and the windows did not flip open to get the best images of the marsh and its clubs. I was happy to be asked but also silently jealous of the sleekness and speed of the Columbia.
Seabiscuit was just the ticket to get the job done. It was old, slow and the windows opened fully so that Mr. Crowell could reach out and take the necessary photographs. On a cold, January morning in 2014, Mr. Crowell and I departed Pineville Municipal Airport in Seabiscuit and pointed the nose south towards Lake Charles and Louisiana’s southern marshes. He needed aerial photographs for a wide angel of the clubs and the marsh and drones for civilian use were not yet a popular or an economic option. On the other hand, a thirty-five-year-old rented plane from the local FBO with a forty-four-year-old IFR pilot who worked for free was a sound economic option for his photos.
We flew southwest at 4,500 feet over the timber plantations of central Louisiana until reaching the marsh and then dropped down to 600 feet for the photo shoot. I had never done anything like this before and was not sure how to tell the ATC what we were doing. I had heard pipeline pilots along the coast over the years talking to the various controllers about what they were doing so I tried to mimic those pilots when describing our flight path just outside the approach corridor for both Lake Charles Regional and Chennault International. We didn’t have a grid pattern or route we were flying other than Mr. Crowell saying something like “go over there.” In response I would initiate a call with the controller and advise which direction we were heading with our altitude. All the controllers were accommodating while we zig-zagged back and forth over the coast. After an hour or so, Mr. Crowell declared he had what he needed and we headed back towards Pineville. My logbook entry that day was concise – “Flight with Dick Crowell to fly over the Coastal Club to take pictures for his book – Photos from 600 feet. Beautiful day – 35 degrees.” Total time in the air was 2.3 hours.
When the book was published, Mr. Crowell gifted a signed copy to me. I hurriedly flipped though the book looking for the photos from the day of the trip. Out of the hundreds of digital images he took that day, three made it into the book. I’m honored to have been a part of the creative process and to unofficially to have been published (although I did not take the photos, I feel I got him in the right place for the perfect shot).
What I love about flying is that each flying experience is unique, and the FAA requires us to document at least the basics of each flight. I have always been a fan of putting more down in my logbook than necessary so that during circumstances like this I can get a context of what happened on a particular flight. Combine that with the thousands of photos we all have on our phones and even the failing memory of an old, grey and paint chipped pilot can remember the intricate details of a flight twelve years ago.
Like most pilots, many of my flights are routine going from point A to point B. No amount of wordsmithing in a logbook can make those flights more interesting. They are just flights. But over a number of years and hundreds of flying hours, certain occasions have more memory potential than others. Flying with a friend on a cold and sunny January day over the south Louisiana marsh to get the perfect picture for a book is certainly a flying memory that I won’t forget. Seabiscuit, in all her ugliness, did her job that day and I’m sad she won’t be delivering similar memories to future pilots. When looking at this logbook entry I was stunned to see the entry right below. Seven days after that flight to the coast, I purchased my first plane and took my first training flight in N700CW. I entered a new phase in my flying career with an endorsement for a retractable gear complex airplane. The purchase of N700CW, a Mooney M20J, would end my aerial photography career. Like the Columbia, the Mooney just wasn’t built to go low and slow, or for passengers to open the windows and take pictures. While I miss my days puttering around in Seabiscuit, I cannot say I’m too upset with my new chapter making memories in the flight levels. Now I just take pictures with the windows closed.
*Mr. Crowell’s book “The Chenier Plain” can be purchased on Amazon.
