I’ve been itching to fly the aircraft back home to Yarmouth, NS for quite awhile. I looked at my schedule a few days ago, and realized that this past weekend was possibly the only chance I had before Labour Day to get to Yarmouth. The weather looked acceptable, so I booked a day off work (Friday), and planned the trip. Terry couldn’t get away on Friday, and I had to at least try to be back in Ottawa for Monday morning, so I had to go without her. Otherwise it would have been fly down on Saturday, and back to Ottawa on Sunday, which would be pretty crazy.
The weather was fairly good on Friday, with some mid level cloud, and strong tailwinds at altitude. I elected to fly IFR, which allowed me to go higher to take advantage of those winds. The tailwinds averaged about 25 kt, but they were over 30 kt in some places. I took advantage of the empty back seat to strap my laptop down and recorded cruise performance data for the whole trip. I got at 10 or 20 minutes of data at five different altitude/power setting combinations. I'll crunch that data in the coming days.
Montreal off the left wing.
Starting across the Bay of Fundy, with Grand Manan Island just ahead. I climbed to 13,000 ft for this part of the trip, to ensure I was well within gliding range of land the whole way across. There is about 24 nm of water between Grand Manan Island and Digby Neck.
Going past Digby Neck - almost back to the main land.
In Yarmouth County now, with its hundreds of lakes. I grew up near Lake George, which is the big lake in this picture. I did a quick pass by the house to let Mom know I was in the area, then headed to the airport where Dad was waiting. The weather was very nice, and you never know when it will be nice again, despite all the predictions by the weather guessers, so I took Dad for a local flight shortly after arriving in Yarmouth.
Odile Rablat, from France, arrived about the same time I did. She is making a grand tour around Canada in an ultra-light. She went from Montreal to British Columbia and back last summer, and this year she is doing the Maritime Provinces. She is a real adventurer, living a dream she has had for several years.
