William lands copter on water in Canada
Prince William (in blue shirt) rows in a dragon boat race while his wife Kate stands on the boat in Dalvay-by-the-Sea
Prince William successfully splashed down on a Canadian lake on Monday in a massive Sea King helicopter for an emergency water landing drill.
William, a Royal Air Force search and rescue Sea King pilot, was taking part in a “waterbirding” exercise on a Prince Edward Island lake he had requested midway through his official nine-day visit of Canada with his wife Catherine.
The controlled landing procedure was developed in Canada — the only country to train its pilots for the drill — in the event of engine failure while military helicopters scout for enemy submarines or during search and rescue operations.
Pilots cut the engine just before the helicopter is landed on the water. A half dozen members of William’s air force unit have come here each year to learn the manoeuvre, Major Patrick MacNamara, navigator on William’s training exercise, told AFP.
“He’d heard a lot about it from his mates back home and wanted to try it,” he said.
As Kate looked on nervously from the shores of Dalvay by The Sea, a popular historic hotel site, William took the controls of the military whirlybird and dove it into a small lake, then skimmed along the water like a duck before taking off vertically. “That was cool!” screamed an onlooker. Canadian Forces Major Mark Kotzer explained it was “very important for the pilot to keep the tail rotor out of the water,” as the prince repeated the procedure a dozen times.
On the fifth landing, William shut off one of the Sea King’s two engines to simulate engine failure, coming in faster and harder and kicking up a mist of lake water over the hundreds of fans watching from shore. He also tried a few blind landings, using only the helicopter’s onboard instruments. “It was extremely well done,” said Kotzer.
MacNamara noted the man second in line to the British throne “was having quite a bit of fun.”
“And he certainly knows what he’s doing in an aircraft,” added MacNamara, describing William’s landings as “very crisp.”
“It’s a very different feeling landing in water: (for the pilot) the horizon sits much lower than you’re used to, and you can feel the water rush underneath the helicopter,” he said.
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‘Kate at risk of anorexia’
Rome: Kate Middleton, the 29-year-old Duchess of Cambridge, is at risk of contracting anorexia, says an Italian expert.
“You only need look at the pictures from the current visit to Canada to see that she really has lost a lot of weight and that she’s bordering on anorexia,” said Fabiola De Clercq, founder of Italy’s Association for the Study and Research of Anorexia. Prince William and Kate’s tour of Canada and the US began June 30.
—IANS
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