Conquering the fear ..one XC at a time.

[VTC_WS6]

So I finally grew a pair and did it, I'd been talking about taking the wife to lovley Marathon key (part of the chain of 'keys' running south from Florida's southern end) for some time now, infact out of the 4 guys in my instrument ground school, I was the only one left who hadn;t made the trip lol. Well, after much planning and weather watching, not to mention countless hours watching YouTube videos of approaches to MTH etc, I finally did it with a nice flight down the western coast line, right over the Florida bay and into KMTH. My biggest concern of the trip wasn't so much the water crossing at the end of Fl (26 miles to MTH), but the fact that from Everglades city down to the southern tip of Florida is a stretch of about 76 miles.... with ZERO civilization. Nothing but water, swap, and jungle, all the makings of a great sequel to 'Castaway' lol. Anways, it was a nice smooth flight, 5,500' just above the puffers with great shots of the carribean and gulf waters, the trip back was a little choppy, I wanted to try 6,500' but even then the later afternoon clouds had risen and I didn't want to climb too high for too long, so down to 4,500 and riding the thermals it was for me and the wife. It was rather rough and tumble getting in to Naples, especially decending through 3,000 where I was just waiting for this to turn into an inadvertant acrobatic lesson lol, but things calmed just enough to pull off a squeaker on 23, nothing like the warm comforting feeling of a local tower guy and the familiar face of home base.. enjoy the pics!

 

[VTC_WS6]

 

[VTC_WS6]

 

[denverpilot]

Nice photos.

How fast did you descend? Just a thought as to why the descent was more bumpy... sometimes you gotta pull the throttle back to keep things from getting too squirrelly.

Us Cessna drivers love to descend with the power up when we can to "make up" for that long slow climb to get up there...

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Nice.

It sure is reassuring to have an engine monitor when you get to that point in Florida where an engine failure means you get to choose between sharks to the right, or alligators to the left...

 

[Jeanie]

I thought it was more like sharks to the right and burmese pythons to the left.....??

Anyway, great pictures. I think I would be nervous flying over water.

 

[AdamZ]

Good on you for making the trip!!! BTW I agree that the everglades crossing would be more worrisome to me than the water.

 

[Arbiter419]

That's a funny lookin' prop you got there.

Glad you had a good trip!

 

[VTC_WS6]

Thanks for the comments, we had a great time! Decent was nothing out of this world, just had to find a gap to get down since the island came up quicker than expected lol.. the ride back was a little rougher because I had to fly under the clouds, not too bad till I got back in over land around Marco Island, had the elevator fall out from under me a few times heh.

 

[Dave2]

Ya should have been there 2 weeks ago. Not a cloud in the sky, and the air was as smooth as glass. A few more pictures of the Keys out of Marathon. Ok I lied :wink2: a few little clouds.