Well we might be two days late but we made it home!! All I can say was it was a GREAT trip!!! Laura and I left S37 last Wednesday and buzzed around the ADIZ and landed at Warrenton Virgina and meet Rob Brooks and Rick McBride. The weather was great the whole way to Fl except for a little cloud build up around Shaw Air Force base, Rick in his beautiful RV-8 lead us the whole way making it way easy on Rob and I. We landed at Sylvania,Ga for some go-go juice and blasted back into the blue and kept running for Ft Pierce. We made good time and hit Ft Peirce within about 4:30hrs after leaving HWY, upon landing we found the Tiki/Volo jet center ramp packed with 48 Cirrus:-o But due to some earlier phone calls we were able to stick the 8's in a hangar. We got a ride to the Royal Inn (highly recommended) and had a good dinner and some awesome Key lime pie at Archies. We got up earlier and got to the airport fueled up donned our life vests and filed our flight plans and launched for the Bahamas Mon!! Rob lead this time and it was much easier than I thought it might be, just called Miami radio and opened all three flight plans and we were golden. After about 10mins we saw the outline of Grand Bahama Island and another 40 mins later we were in the pattern at Treasure Cay, landed and had big smiles all around we had done it conquered the first part of our trip!
We spent a fun couple of days in the islands, lots of sun and fun the locals were great, customs was a breeze. We got ready to launch back to the states on Monday but we sat around waiting on a line of storms to get past the islands. But they finally blew past and we headed back to the good ole USA, believe it or not customs was quicker in the US than the Bahamas!
After a quick bite to eat Rick and Rob headed to SnF and made it safe and sound, but Laura and I only made it about 100mi north and hit a wall of rain and low clouds(i mean the kind of rain you can't see thru) so we hit the nearest and landed in 18G27 winds at Ormand Beach, FL we spent the night and most of the next day waiting on the clouds to lift enough to make a break for it. Finally at 3pm we had enough of a ceiling and a promise of clearing skies west towards Gainesville, and sure enough by the time we got to Gainesville it was clearing. We made a fuel stop in Camden,SC (great airport) and then got as far as Smithfield, NC. Got a cool courtesy car and a good nights sleep, but we woke up to the same story low clouds and IFR forecast for all over. Laura and I spent a tough couple of hours going over all of the weather info and forming a plan, let me say today was a BIG learning experience. We were able to make it VFR all the way home but we had to basically go west to the Roanoke area and then cross the mountains into the Shenandoah valley to make it towards Winchester and then stopped again to make a evaluation of what layed ahead. FDK was saying they were clear and 10sm vis but Lancaster was calling 4mi vis in HZ and overcast at 1500' So we made the decision to try for FDK(Fredrick MD) and see what happens, we got to FDK fine and things looked good so we decided to go for York, Pa(THV) with the idea if it started to look bad we would do a 180 and land at FDK.
The closer we got to THV the worse the vis got but it stayed at least 5mi so I slowed up and putted along at 145kts and worked our way towards S37. And we after two days finally made it back to the home base:-)
Overall a wonderful trip, lots of memories and great new friends!!
Kirk
P.S You better believe I gave "Queenie" a Big hug and a nice wipe down after conquering the Bermuda Triangle!!!
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Hi Guys!! We are finally home:-)
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