20111002023099A

Pilot left Washington executive / hyde field (W32) around 1230 local time (LCL) for trip to tangier Island, Virginia (tgi) with his mother. They then departed tgi at approximately 1500-1530 LCL returning to W32. At 2000 feet and below an overcast cloud layer the airplane lost power, because of the low overcast the pilot thought it might be carburetor ice so he "pulled" carburetor heat on but the engine never caught. The pilot transmitted an emergency call "mayday" to patuxent river and the ATC controller suggested Smith Island. The pilot turned toward Smith Island and continued with emergency procedures by checking the magnetos, turning on the fuel boost pump and moving the mixture to rich. The pilot estimates that when the engine quit he was six miles from Smith Island and that at best he would have glided two miles closer to the Island, "the swift glides like a rock".the airplane impacted the water hard in three to five foot waves and 30 knots of wind (airman's estimates). The pilot stated that from the time of impact to a cockpit full of water and the airplane sinking was about 2 seconds. He tried to get his mother and thought "not going to be able to get this," she went under water with the airplane. "A few seconds later mom pops out." The pilot and his mother stayed at the site for 20 minutes and saw a "chopper" fly overhead. The pilot stated that they had four or five opportunities but they were both dressed in black and the helicopter never saw them. At this point the pilot and his mother decided to swim to land. It took a long time to spot land because of waves. The pilot stated that his mother "was bobbing like a cork" and they decided that she would float and he would "shove" and then swim up to her. The pilot tied off the ends of his pants legs and used them as a floatation aid, inflating the pants between pushing his mother and swimming to her. After approximately 1.5 miles he realized that "mom's head was in the water and probably had been for a while." Due to fatigue the pilot left his mother's body behind as he swam to land. Reaching land, fatigued and cold, the pilot was unable to walk on the marsh lands of Smith Island because his legs would sink into the surface. He crawled until the ground was solid enough and then was able to obtain help from a local resident. The pilot was taken to the peninsula regional medical center (prmc) in salisbury, MD. The pilot speculated, based on the elapsed flight time accumulated flying to tgi, that he may have had the fuel selector in the auxiliary tank position instead of the main tank position throughout the flights. This was only a guess and he is not certain of this conclusion. At this time the aircraft has not been recovered from the chesapeake bay.