b'Chapter ElevenI twas to be the firstflight of its kind: a nonstop trans-continental crossing in a singleenginejet fighter. On a June morning in 1965, a four-plane flight took off from an TA. naval air station, Major Hillary TeClaire in command.They were flying A-4B Slyhawks,and when they got to Olathe, KS, a tankerplane was to refuel them. But the procedure barely worked. Three of thejets had to land. Tow on fuel, Major TeClaire was going to divert to Willow Grove, PA, but the weather was marginal there, so he decidedto continue on to South Weymouth.Ifigured if I was going to die,he says with a chuckle,I d ratherfor it to be near home on the Cape. Besides, I knew the landing procedures better at Weymouth. Six hours after takeoff, TeClaire touched down on instruments at Weymouth N. A. S.I was very stiff,he recalls,and pretty wired, and there wasnt much fuel left at all.It was one of those risky voyages that gutsy American pilots have taken since the 1920s.Late in the warmth of 1983s summer, Friends of Stage Harbor Waterways began its voyage across the uneasy waters of Stage Harbor. It had a small crew, and the vessel wasnt very large. But the men and women who built and launched it had a special kind of determination. In their neighborhood at the fringes of the harbor, they saw problems. No one else in town seemed fired up about overcoming them. But they were. And their successors in the crew on deck have been working at that ever since.Their ports of call have been many, and many of their aims have been met. Look at the log of the Friends, first named FSHW, then FCW: saving the Old Mill Boat Yard from a commercial fate; persuading the Town to require a home-owner to have his or her septic system inspected when the house was to be sold; putting a lot of volunteer hours and big money behind making a reality of the Stage Harbor Management Plan; pushing hard to have a pump-out station installed; backing the tireless efforts of Debby Ecker to do not one but two economic studies of Chatham.But those arent the only destinations reached by FCWs 21-member board. Consider the Navigational Chart # 50 E created by George Olmsted and the late Jim Davis. Or the demonstration garden, attuned to the weather whimsies of Cape Cod, that a team of FCW members made visible and successful. Or195'