52 FlightJournal.com
RIGHT PLACE,
RIGHT TIME
How Luck and Fate Allowed
Me to Survive My Missions
BY CHARLES O’MAHONY | PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
Christophe and Isabelle Laniece live in Grenoble, France, and they
are both physicians. They also happen to be world-class sailors. In Au-
gust 2006, they drove to Marseilles with their son, Cami, and daughters
Elsa and Charlotte, and there they embarked on a 10-day cruise on the
Mediterranean Sea that would cover 1,200 miles—on a catamaran! Jane,
Charlotte’s pen pal from Philadelphia, was with them.
On the first leg of their odyssey, the twin hulls of their sleek vessel
carried them east past Toulon to the tip of the island of Corsica and
then south along the coast. Charlotte’s friend, Jane, is my granddaugh-
ter, and when Jane told me about her adventure, it occurred to me that
they had sailed directly over some of our U.S. aircraft that had ditched
in the Mediterranean during WW II.