PEAK

22 P E A K | S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 IT'S NOT AT ALL UNUSUAL during the school year for a college student to slap on a silly hat and work part-time at a fast food joint to keep gas in the old beater handed down from the 'rents. Dartmouth sophomore Nathan Johans- son's part-time job isn't slinging burgers and it's a good bet you won't see him pulling a rust bucket up to a gas tank at the Co-Op. Unless, perhaps, he's on his way to the airport. A skipper on the Big Green sailing team, Johansson is also a certified flight instruc- tor, a commercial pilot and president of his eponymous Johansson Aviation, LLC – of- fices in Miami, Los Angeles and Lebanon in case you are wondering– as well as the proud owner of a Cessna 172-M that he keeps this time of year at Lebanon Munici- pal Airport. Jaw hit the floor yet? The Miami native comes by the sailing piece naturally, thanks to his Viking blood- lines. With a father who sailed in his native Sweden the younger Johansson was on the water by age seven and racing by age 12. The flying piece is all on him. "I was the first one to pick it up," he said. "When I was little, like most kids, I liked big trucks, big boats, big planes. I just kind of never outgrew any of those things. "I started off on a computer playing with flight simulators. I would sell snow cones in the summertime saving up money to buy flying textbooks and did a lot of self-study with them. I guess my parents kind of hoped that I would drop it eventually, but I was begging and begging until they sent me for my first lesson when I was 14. I got the bug and I couldn't shake it." He earned his private pilot license at 17 and never looked back. "My parents thought that would be it but I didn't stop," he said with a laugh. "I went on to get an instrument rating, a commer- cial rating, multi-engine and flight instruc- tor ratings." When it came time for college he con- sidered Stanford before ultimately deciding between the U.S. Naval Academy, where he could both sail and fly, and Dartmouth. While he admired the structure that came with school in Annapolis, he wasn't a fan of the lengthy commitment to become a naval pilot. "Dartmouth was the last school I saw and when I stepped on campus it was like a punch to the chest where I felt like, wow, this is where I've got to be," he said. "I did the typical admissions tour, then I went to a sailing team practice and it was by far the most connected team I saw. It felt like a true family and that's the way it is. "I really love sailing on Lake Mascoma. We are in a bubble in the sense that we can focus on what we need to improve on. It's just my boat, my teammates and a pack of 15-to-20 boats out there. If we were sailing on the Charles we would be sailing next to MIT and maybe stressing out about what are they working on. Or what is BC or Tufts doing? I like the environment we have to be able to train here." And, he might add, to be able to fly. In addition to giving lessons, Johansson has an active plane ferrying business where he (or one of his subcontractors) will either pick up or deliver a plane for clients. "I will 'airline' from Boston to wherever the airplane is, do a full inspection, make sure everything is good to go and then fly it to the owner's destination," Johansson explained. "They will inspect it, we'll do the paperwork and then I will 'airline' back home." Johansson, whose longest ferrying trip involved flying a plane from Seattle to Bos- ton, had six ferrying jobs this winter and he'll proudly tell you he didn't miss a class. One of the more memorable ferry jobs he's had was delivering a plane from a small field in Maine to Oklahoma City, an assign- ment that he originally scheduled for two days but he was able to complete in one. "I was able to get going early, the plane had a fully working autopilot and I was able to get it up to 12,000 feet," he said. "I remember being over Kansas and the whole state was cloudless with blue skies. I remember about 3 o'clock feeling so lucky and glad to be up there." Johansson, who is using fees from his teaching lessons and ferrying income to help pay off his plane, sees a direct parallel between his dual passions on the water and in the air. "Lift, drag, weight, it's all the same thing," he said. "I tell sailors who I have taken up that you take the sail and you flip it horizontally and that's all we are doing. The principles are the same." Johansson hopes to one day work as a developer while maintaining the ferrying business on the side so he can grab an inter- esting flight from time to time, perhaps to a Caribbean island one time and to Africa the next. As for sailing, he's not planning on giv- ing that up anytime soon. He's excited about the prospects for the Dartmouth team this spring, hopes to keep racing when his col- lege career is over, and will keep sailing even longer. T a k e t o t h e S k y + [ [

• Cover