North of Town is a new column by Peak contributor, author and CBC journalist Grant Lawrence. Each month, Lawrence will profile the lives and livelihoods of those who have chosen life at or beyond the end of Highway 101.
If you’ve ever spent time north of town in the summer – maybe in Okeover, Lund or on Savary Island – you might have heard a strange, loud buzzing sound, like some sort of Jurassic mosquito.
Your first instinct may be to glance out over the water, to see what kind of boat it might be. Then you realize the mechanical sound isn’t coming from the water. It’s coming from the sky.
For close to 20 years, Okeover resident and registered pilot Bernd Scheifele has been taking to the sky on perfect, blue sky summer days in his highly irregular flying machines: homemade contraptions that basically look like a cross between a go-kart and a hang glider. Along with huckleberries and kayaks, the sight of Scheifele in the air has become one of the sure signs summer has arrived in Desolation Sound.
Specifically, Scheifele uses what’s called a Rogallo wing, a much sturdier version than your average hang-glider wing. The Rogallo can handle much more weight, like an engine, fuel tank, pontoons, instruments and a seat. The heavy-duty wing was developed by Francis Rogallo, a NASA engineer, in the late 1940s.
The Bavarian-born Scheifele’s love of flying has been with him since he was a boy. Growing up in the mountains of Germany, he collected and built model airplanes. Then he saw someone flying a Rogallo wing over the Alps and his life changed forever. He flew his first Rogallo wing in 1970 when he was 18.
“I always liked to play with flying things,” explained Scheifele, while we walked along the rocky shore of Okeover Inlet a few weeks ago. He has maintained a crisp Bavarian accent despite his 26 years in Canada.
“In 1972, they held the first world championships in Austria, jumping from high mountains over cliffs and flying, and I registered, but I didn’t do too well. I placed somewhere in the middle of the field,” he added.
Scheifele and his wife Josaphine came to Canada in 1994, eventually settling in Okeover in a quest to find the end of the road. There, they built Desolation Sound Resort, which opened just south of the government wharf in 1997. They successfully ran the resort for the next 18 years, selling it and retiring in 2015.
“Hanggliding wasn’t very popular when we came here,” recalled Scheifele. “There was some in Vancouver and the Okanagan, but that didn’t really work out for me. So I was looking for another possibility. That’s when I realized that, here in Okeover, you have the ocean, which is a lot of runway if you think about it.”
To utilize that floating airstrip right outside his front door, Scheifele’s first attempt was something called a Weedhopper ultralite, which he hand built and actually got up into the air, but it didn’t end well.
“I crashed it in Okeover Inlet,” recounted Scheifele with a fearless laugh. “The engine quit and the thing went nose down into the ocean. I somehow crawled out of it as it was sinking and I swam home. That thing was destroyed. I didn’t wear a life jacket at the time but I wear one now.”
Because Scheifele essentially builds these flying machines from the ground up, piecing together the parts, it often takes several attempts and alterations to actually get them to fly. He’s built many over the decades, including one attached to a zodiac that he called The Rubber Duck. His current machine, nearing the end of its flying life, is named Chitty Bang. Up close, it’s an impressive piece of machinery.
“I’m inventing,” said Scheifele with a gleeful twinkle in his eye. “I’m building these things for the first time, so you don’t know what’s going to happen when you get them out on the water.”
After the ultralite crash, he moved to a Rogallo wing, which he attached to a frame, a motor and a rear propeller. He can remember that first flight clearly, too.
“The damn thing didn’t want to fly. When it finally broke away from the water, it went almost straight up. I remember thinking ‘oh, shit!’ But that’s the thing with flying – you can’t stop, you just have to adjust and regain control.”
Scheifele and his wife have raised two boys in Okeover – both now grown men - but neither share their dad’s passion for homemade flight. Nor does his wife.
“They’ve always looked the other way,” chuckled Scheifele. “My wife is accepting of it maybe now, but for 20 years she thought I was nuts going up there. And I am!”
These days, before Scheifele takes flight, he waits for the perfect conditions.
“Wind is the main thing,” he explained. “The older I get, the more careful I get, so now I don’t fly if it’s blowing more than 10 kilometres. This is flying for fun, and it’s no fun trying to fight it. All the steering is in the arms, like a hang glider.”
There is also only one seat. Scheifele doesn’t give rides. Ever. His wacky machines are registered aircrafts, but he’s not insured for passengers.
Over his years of coastal flights, Scheifele estimates he’s crashed “about six or seven times,” but has always walked – or swam – away unscathed. He’s never had an injury, and he doesn’t wear a parachute.
Scheifele is now 68, and doesn’t know how much longer he’ll keep flying.
“Everybody runs out of luck one day,” he said. “An end will be coming, but I will keep doing this as long as I feel fit to fly.”
And while thousands of people over the years have craned their necks from the ground and sea level to try and catch a glimpse of that guy in his flying machine high over Malaspina Peninsula or the Bunster Hills, there is a disconnect of mystery between those down here and Scheifele up there. I had seen him flying over Desolation Sound for years, but only met him face to face this summer.
“Nobody understands what this thing actually is when they are on the ground,” confirmed Scheifele, shaking his long, curly grey hair from side to side. “Everybody waves and everybody wonders what that might be.”
Now you know.
Grant Lawrence is an award-winning author, columnist and radio personality who considers Powell River and Desolation Sound his second home. An audio version of this story originally aired on CBC Radio.
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