Flashes of lightening and crashes of thunder with palms whipping
against our window started our day at 3:00 AM. Immediately we were
both worried about Subie but were not willing to verbalize what could
be happening to our little plane only a few miles away. Steve started
to question whether he put the gust lock on after our Salt Cay
adventure. We tried to ignore our angst and get a little sleep. By
6:00 AM it felt like the brunt of the storm had passed. This storm
came out of nowhere. A couple of the little boats in front of the
hotel were lost down the coast. We decided to work through our planned
departure to Dominican Republic and just assume Subie was fine. Steve
spent some time dealing with international flight plans and EAPIS as
we planned to end up in Puerto Rico, USA. by the end of the day.
What a relief when we got to the airport. I never saw anything so
beautiful as our little plane standing alone off the runway with gust
lock and XL jet wheel chalks firmly in place. She had weathered the
storm, and the storm was headed north east. We were on our way south
east, so that sounded good. It was VFR with broken layers. This looked
like our window of opportunity. We were off with sort of low
visibility, probably 5 miles, cloud level 5000 for an hour flight to
Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.After about 20 minutes int the
flilght, cloud layers thickened and lowered a bit, so of course we had
to decend, visibility- maybe 3 miles and the head wind is what really
slowed things down, 25 miles on the nose. I can't tell you how happy
we were to see land.
After 2 1/2 hours dealing with the Dominican Repulic red tape we were
ready for our final leg of the day. The good news was that the weather
had improved. We had a wonderful flight to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.
The cloud cover came back near the end of the flight and Steve did an
IFR approach into Aguadilla.
All is well that ends well! We are hoping for better weather! Deep breath! :)
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