The Big Picture: The Blade Babe Soars
For 12 years, Diane Barrington found photo and rescue helicopters for high-performance boat events all over the country. Then life got complicated
Pick up a copy of Powerboat magazine and you see—no big surprise here—a boat running on the cover. As Powerboat covers the high-performance marine world, you’re likely looking at a V-bottom or catamaran at least 30 feet long. Without question, the image of that boat was captured from a helicopter.
Why the helicopter? High-performance boats are big objects. To maximize the useable space on a magazine cover, the image has to be—like the magazine cover itself—vertical. For the photographer to fit the boat into a single vertical frame of a 35mm lens (the distortion of wide-angle rules it out), he needs distance and altitude from the boat. Shooting from a helicopter provides that perspective.
Now, when you’re a magazine editor or an event organizer looking for a helicopter to fly for photos, you don’t simply go to the Yellow Pages and call “Barnstormer Bob’s Helicopter Service.” For while Barnstormer Bob may be one a hell of a nice guy and a fabulous pilot, and he may have some awesome stories from his glory days, that doesn’t mean he knows beans about flying for photo shoots.
For 12 years, the person to call when you needed a helicopter for photos was Diane Barrington, also known as “The Blade Babe” in reference to the blades on a helicopter. (Important safety tip: You probably don’t want to call her that unless you know her.)
Diane and Connor Barrington
In 1997, Barrington, was working for Biscayne Helicopters from Miami when she got a call from Fountain Powerboats. The company needed a helicopter for a race in Sarasota, Fla., where Barrington, 49, lives now. Barrington went along for the ride, and didn’t like what she saw.
“There were helicopters landing all over the place, no one knew where they were coming from, there was no pilots’ meeting before the race, no insurance,” she recalls. “When I went back and told the owner of Biscayne about it, he wasn’t sure he wanted to send helicopters to races, so I decided to go for it and start my own helicopter broker business. I started arranging rescue helicopters for a few different teams. Drambuie On Ice, Ragamuffin and Ocean Spray were my first clients.”
This image of a 38-foot-long performance off Sarasota, Fla., was captured by Robert Brown from a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. (Photo courtesy/copyright Robert Brown)
Eventually, Barrington was arranging rescue helicopters, complete with rescue divers thanks to her association with Miami-based firefighter Craig Radelman, for the APBA (American Power Boat Association) Offshore and Super Boat International offshore racing circuits. She expanded her business to arrange helicopters for Powerboat and other magazines.
Everyone who mattered in the go-fast powerboat event world knew Diane Barrington, who was equal parts charming flirt and nails-tough negotiator. She set up helicopters all over the country. She arranged them north of the border. She got things done, her word was golden and her business was booming.
And then quite suddenly it wasn’t. The events of September 11, 2001, changed everything and Barrington’s business got a whole lot tougher.
“Landing zones became severely restricted, insurance skyrocketed and helicopters became scarce,” she says. “In 2007, I decided to call it quits and go into real estate.”
Truth be told, Barrington’s real challenge began the year earlier when she was diagnosed with melanoma in the bottom of her foot. Surgery took the ball of her foot, as well as a couple of her lymph nodes and she was given a clean bill of health.
“It was see you later, have a great life,” she says.
A year later, her cancer returned. “The second time you get diagnosed with melanoma, you’re an automatic Stage Four because the cancer has entered your lymphatic system and there is no ‘cure,’” she says.
After having the lymph nodes in her groin removed, Barrington embarked on a nightmarish, year-long Interferon treatment program. In her first month, she received the drug every day through an IV port. Three times a week for the next 11 months, she was injected with Interferon in her hip.
“Interferon has massive side effects—it makes you feel like shit,” she says, then laughs. “But I still look damn good.”
Barrington made friends in the high-performance world, and during her year-long treatment she found out who they were. She “never, ever” went to treatment alone. In the first month, one friend or another brought dinner for her and her son, Connor, 14, every night. They stocked her refrigerator. They got Connor to his football practices and games, and picked him up when he was done.
Dave Patanaude, president of the New Jersey High Performance Powerboat Club sent her a gift from Red Envelope every month. Closer to home, Sarasota-based offshore racer Dave Branch left a bottle of wine (“I couldn’t drink, but it was still very nice,” says Barrington.) or a pie on her doorstep. Or he just showed and hung out with her.
“One time when Dave was in Colorado, he called me and I said, ‘I feel like shit. I’ve lost 22 pounds and I don’t know what’s going on, but if I had a couple of pieces of chocolate-covered caramel I would feel great.’ Within an hour, one of his employees brought a box of caramel-covered chocolates to my house.”
At the moment, Barrington has a “clean bill of health.” She must return to the hospital for CAT and PET scans every three months. Yet being “Stage 4” means that the chance of the melanoma showing up again remains. But don’t tell it to the Blade Babe. (And again, don’t call her that unless you know her and, what’s more, she really likes you.)
“As far I’m concerned, it’s done—it’s not coming back,” says Barrington. “I live every single day to the max, just like I always did. You just have to go for it. Every day.”
