re: Bahamas - Long island arrival by water

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so when we were 10 minutes out Joel called friends to line their cars up on edges of the runway with their headlights on.

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That is awesome!

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I love the islands so much

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Same.


A few years ago, we were taking a puddle jumper over to Andros. (I won't share the pilot or company because we still use them and I don't want people to be turned off to him.) Anyway, our regular pilot was unavailable, and he got one of his friends to fly us over - 5 of us total.

We get about 2 minutes into the flight and there is a giant mountain of a black cloud right in front of us. I'm sitting next to the pilot and he starts squirming, looking left and right.

Me: damn, that's a big storm. We ok?

Him: yeah, should be fine. but I'm VFR only. (It didn't matter anyway, because this plane's electronics were on par with a 1954 chevy truck.)

He starts fidgeting with some dials, says something into his mic that I can't hear. And then we start dodging clouds, looking for any clear path through these storm clouds. I mean we are going left/right/up/down.

I keep thinking, damn, what's the chances of us finding a plane coming from Andros doing the same thing we're doing? We're bound to meet up, right?

The flight to Andros is normally 12 minutes from take-off to landing. After about 10 minutes in this storm cloud, at least 2 of which we couldn't see ANYTHING but black clouds and lightening all around us, the skies open up and we see the airport right below us.

The pilot's face went from, "I'm about to shite my pants" to "dear god baby jesus, we're ok" in an instant.

He looks at me, smiles, gives me a thumbs up and yells, "We're GOOOOOOOOOD!!!".

After we unloaded, I asked him if he was headed back to Nassau.

"No mon, I'm going to the bar next door and have some kalik. I need some time."

I do love the bahamas.