September 25th: Goodbye, OBX

I didn't sleep the best and was up pretty early the next morning. Oh well, more time to pore over the weather and figure out when I had to leave!

So far, so good...I could still see blue sky.   :)

After going over a few more forecasts, it looked like I could hang out until about lunchtime before I'd have to take off to beat the lower clouds out. Mark and I packed the doggies into the car for the short ride to the beach.

The waves weren't as big here as they were in Frisco the day before, but we were also a lot further up the coast.

The beach was pretty quiet, though there were a few other people walking by the water. There were already red flags up for the day.

It was still nice to walk along the beach, though.   :)

It would have been nice to spend some more time here, but between the time restriction for the doggies and the time restriction for me with the weather, it was time to head back to the house.

I drank some coffee out on the front porch...

...while Zach made us breakfast. We hung out, listened to music, and drank some coffee for a while, then I packed up my stuff, said goodbye to Zach, and rode to the airport with Mark and the doggies. Time to get out while the getting was good!

It only took a few minutes to wrap up with the FBO, then we drove out to the plane and unloaded the car. The ramp was a lot quieter than it had been the day before, plus the wind was howling (thankfully, right down the runway). I said goodbye to Mark and the doggies, packed up the plane, preflighted, checked the weather one last time, and fired up.

When I took off, the weather was reporting 1000' broken. Definitely not ideal, but still technically VFR. I knew that the weather at home was gorgeous blue skies, and that once I got across the NC/VA state line the clouds should start to break up. Plan A was to take off, climb up through the gaps in the clouds, and cruise home on top of everything until it broke up below me. Plan B was to stay low over the water, under the clouds, and pick my way up the coast until the clouds started to lift and climb when I safely could. Plan C was to take off, say 'screw this', come back and land, leave the plane in MQI, ride home with Mark and Zach the next day, then come back to pick up the plane the following week. No matter what, though, I wasn't going to fly into anything I wasn't comfortable with. Sooo...

...turns out that Plan A worked out just fine! This was shortly after I departed MQI. I had no problem picking my way through the lower layer and only had to make one slight turn to get up through the clouds. (And that yellow spot on the land is Jockey's Ridge State Park, where we were the day before.)

This was looking west; it looked a little gloomier that way, but it was still very easy to keep the legal distances from the clouds and stay VFR.

After a few minutes I was over the first layer...

...and then a few minutes after that, I was over the second layer, too.

For how gloomy that looked and how bad the weather was showing, that was one of the easiest times I've ever picked my way through the clouds!

This is my Foreflight display; it took less than 15 miles to climb out to clear blue skies. Not bad! (And you can see how strong the winds aloft are; that light green circle around my airplane is how far I could glide if I lost my engine. It's definitely lopsided!)

I leveled off at 4500' and cruised up there for a while. I wound up with a 10-15kt tailwind, which was way better than I expected! For fun, I listened to Norfolk approach along the way.

The clouds started to break up below me right around the state line, just like I expected.

The further north I flew, the better it looked...

...and by the time I got up to the James River, the layer was almost completely broken up.

This was somewhere east of Richmond...one lonely cloud.   :)

I stayed up at 4500' for a while, then eventually descended as I got closer to HWY. It was fairly bumpy once I descended, plus I lost my tailwind, but there wasn't much I could do about that.

Ta da - home! It took 2 hours to get back, which was pretty darn good. It would have been nice to stay for the last full day, but I figured I was better off cutting the trip a little short and getting the plane back in the hangar instead of leaving it on the ramp at MQI in a hurricane. Overall, I had a really good time in the Outer Banks, and I'm looking forward to going back someday!