Race to the Shear Switch Episode 224 • So There I Was . . .

Race to the Shear Switch is exactly what it sounds like. You either cut the cable, or the cable decides your night for you. On Episode 224, retired Coast Guard helicopter pilot Larry Hall makes that call for real.

Actually, this episode opens rough. Co-host Fig joins fresh off a highway wreck, rear-ended by a Peterbilt into another rig. However, he’s already cracking jokes about mistaking himself for Captain Kirk on the anesthesia.

Furthermore, guest Larry Hall isn’t new to chaos. The retired Coast Guard aviator flew H-52s off cutters, once herding a boat home with rotor wash. He calls it the Border Collie technique, and it’s exactly as wild as it sounds.

Race to the Shear Switch: Inside Episode 224

Consequently, the real drama shows up at 2 a.m. Larry is flying a night check ride with a young JG named Charlie Ray. They’re trying to pump out a sinking trawler offshore. The hoist cable snags on the boat’s outrigger, and it turns into a straight-up race to the shear switch.

Both pilots reach for it at once. Once you shear the cable, the helicopter turns back into a slow, sad observation platform that can’t do much. Luckily, a Coast Guard boat crew from Station Tybee reaches the trawler first, and everyone gets to go home.

Years later, Larry runs into Charlie again, only now Charlie’s a four-star admiral who remembers every second of that night, calling it the only shear of his entire career. Not a bad story to swap with the Vice Commandant.

Larry also digs into Coast Guard history between stories. He’s a volunteer at the service’s historian’s office, and he name-drops everything from the Cuban boat lift to Douglas Munro’s Medal of Honor at Guadalcanal. It’s a deep well, and he knows exactly where the good stuff is buried.

And that race to the shear switch from decades ago still comes up whenever these two cross paths.