With it being our 10 year anniversary this year.. One of the things we wanted to do was to return to Savannah where we got engaged. Seeing we didn’t make it down for the actual date, we decided to hold off until fall when the weather was a little more tolerable down there and the plane was done and past phase 1. We opted to schedule the trip for Columbus day weekend. I took Friday off to give us a 4 day weekend.

We were blessed with perfect weather as High pressure moved in after the hurricane moved through. On the trip down Friday there was not a cloud in the sky and a slight tailwind the whole trip.

Jeanine sat in the back to keep Declan occupied with games, etc…

With the slight tailwind, we made great time heading down. About 5.5 hours total time. We stopped in Suffolk, VA for gas and they also have a decent restaurant right on the field, which was good for a relatively quick lunch turn around.

We had fun exploring the city. From watching the cargo ships come up and down the river, to the beautiful tree lined streets, the architecture of some of the buildings, and the lovely squares.

Below are some of the pics of the trip.

As the weekend went on, I was watching the weather closely. The majority of the route for home on Monday (as far north as NY City area) was looking clear except pretty windy. However, there was a cold front over New England that was causing lots of uncertainty in the forecast. The forecast continued to show low clouds and visibility improving to VFR by 2pm. So if that forecast held it looked like we could make it all the way home on Monday. Note: I still needed an IPC at this point, so I was restricted to VFR on this trip.

We decided to make a backup plan, and reach out to our friends Gary and Mary in Ocean City, MD. If nothing else, we would make it a fuel stop, catch up, and continue north. Plan B was: we would stay the night in Ocean City and continue on in the morning when things were forecast to clear up in the New England Area.

We launched Monday morning for an approx 1pm arrival in Ocean City. We climbed up to 9500′ to get above the lift line and out of any bumps. The surface winds were gusting in to the high 20kt range, so I expected some bouncing around on the flight, however it was really smooth up at 9500′. Something that never seems to happen is to have tailwinds on both ends of a trip like this. However this day we had some massive tailwinds that just kept getting better as we moved north along the frontal boundary. Those tailwinds had us cooking along at over 200Kts ground speed for the majority of the trip. We made it 475nm in exactly 3 hours.

Winds at Ocean City were challenging, but thankfully mostly down the runway. The winds were 310@18 Gusting to 35Kts. I fought the gusty winds on final, but still made a pretty smooth landing.

Gary was able to capture a video of our landing

When we landed around 1pm, Our home airport was socked in at 400′ Overcast. I was expecting it to at least start lifting by now if it were to actually be VFR by 2pm. Given it wasn’t holding to forecast, I didn’t have much faith that it would suddenly get better. At that point, we decided to stay the night in Ocean City with our friends, who graciously offered to stay with them. We had a great time catching up over a late lunch and at the house that evening. As it turned out, our home airport was still pretty socked in at 9pm that evening, so we made the right call. Refreshed from a good night sleep, we ventured out to breakfast and then we got dropped off at the airport, loaded things up, and launched for home. It was an enjoyable flight at 7500′ and around central MA, we descended down to 3500′ to get below a cloud layer. It was a little bumpy below the clouds for the last 25 minutes or so of the flight, but given the gusty conditions for the whole trip home, I was impressed that only 25 minutes of the trip was a little bumpy.

Some shots of the flight home.

We so thoroughly enjoyed our first weekend away with the plane as a family. It provided a good test run for more trips to come. Wrapping up the weekend: we had 11 hours of flying across about 1600nm of distance to get down and back