Most of the time, his head is in the clouds.

• Position: People - Steve Coan - Brief Article - Biography

In his early 20s, Steve Coan paddled the Amazon River solo from Peru through Brazil in a dugout canoe. A few years later, while circumnavigating the earth in a 47-foot sailboat, he met his wife on a stop in St. Croix.

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But it is in the air, not on the water, where Coan has made a career of smooth sailing. Now 55, the Winston-Salem native flies the world's fastest self-launching sailplane, wowing audiences at air shows with his flight aerobatics.

Sailplanes are engineless gliders, usually towed aloft by a cable attached to a powered plane, then released. Coan's craft has an engine, which he cuts at a height of 5,000 feet. It does not require a tow plane to get airborne. One of his trademark tricks is a 2,000-foot vertical nosedive at a speed of more than 240 miles per hour.

Thirty years ago, Coan started hang gliding around Boone, where he worked on his family's Christmas tree farm. Ten years later, he started a sailplane school there. Coan and his wife set off for Maui, Hawaii, in 1990 to take sightseers on sailplane and biplane trips. In 1994--he was then a five-time U.S. Sailplane Aerobatic...