......Adventure Flying in the "Bermuda Triangle......
.......................by Jim Baker..........
RV's are for adventure, right? Well now that my RV-6 is done, where should I take this little airplane I built in my garage for some adventure? Maybe fly to the Rocky Mountains or the Cascade's on the way to Arlington, Washington and the North West Regional EAA Fly-In? How about Oshkosh, Van's Homecoming, Copperstate, Sun and Fun or three or four other Fly-Ins? I know, I'll fly to the highest airport in the whole United States at Leadville, Colorado. Maybe the Black Hills of South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, or the Tetons in Wyoming. I hear the desert South- West is pretty awesome too. Decisions, decisions……… Well, the little ol' RV-6 I built in my garage has taken me to ALL of these spots the FIRST YEAR it was in the air! Yep, RV's are pretty awesome little traveling machines, but I needed to plan a MAJOR RV ADVENTURE! I needed to fly somewhere really different and off the beaten track. How about flying to the Caribbean Islands through the Bermuda Triangle? Yea......
Ever since I was very young, I heard about this place called "The Devil's Triangle". It always had a lingering mystique. It is a spot out in the Caribbean that allegedly swallows up people, ships and planes. I even watched a TV documentary on it a few years back. The show had historical accounts of WWII airplane squadrons being lost forever in the "triangle". There were accounts of ships swallowed up by fog banks and never seen again. They showed a compass spinning wildly somewhere in the triangle and mentioned this was the way some were thought to have lost their way. I had to know more to decide if this could really be the adventure trip my RV and I had to take.
A little information that I gathered about the Bermuda Triangle showed the official dimensions (if you can call them that) to be the area between Bermuda; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Miami, Florida. However when you start plotting ocean disasters that are attributed to the Triangle its boundaries shift all over the North Atlantic and sometimes into the Eastern Pacific and Gulf of Mexico. Latitude and Longitude of the Triangle: North edge, Bermuda: 32.20 N, 64.45 W. Southeast edge, San Juan: 18.5 N, 66.9 W. West edge, Miami: 25.48N, 80.18 W.
If I were to fly over the water in the Bermuda Triangle, I had to find out a little more about it too. I discovered that while many people have enjoyed the wonderful shallow areas of the Caribbean, few have gone just a few miles away from these shallow areas where the continental shelf gives way to a deep ocean floor! Suddenly, within a matter of miles, water that was only a couple hundred feet deep plunges to thousands of feet deep. About 100 miles north of Puerto Rico lies the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean: the Puerto Rico Trench, estimated at 30,100 ft (9200 meters) deep. The Florida Straits, between Miami and the Bahamas are around 5,000 or so feet deep. This is the shallow water where so many planes and boats have disappeared without a trace. The North East Providence Channel lies between the Grand Bahamas and New Providence islands and has a depth ranging between 6,000 and 12,000 feet (2,000-4,000 meters). This channel is at the tip of a basin that spreads out to cover much of the ocean floor from Miami and the Bahamas clear to Bermuda. This basin is approximately 18,000 feet (6,000 meters) deep. Contrary to the Bermuda Triangle legend, the water of the islands is quite deep and turbulent. The thought of flying at ten thousand feet MSL but really being forty thousand feet above solid ground in my RV was mind-boggling.
Checking Caribbean destinations I could fly to that offered scuba diving, fishing, dining and seclusion while at the same time allowing us to over fly 30,000 feet deep water was fun. I wanted to land on a runway close to the ocean and ideally be within walking distance to our lodging. Out of many choices, I finally picked Pittstown Point located on Crooked Island, Bahamas. Crooked Island is the second from the last island in the southern Bahamas' chain. Pittstown Point's runway is situated between tall trees and the approach end starts about fifty feet from the ocean's edge. The strip is plenty long at 1800 feet too. The lodge is small and quaint, offering only about twelve rooms. The lodge is less than a hundred feet from the edge of the runway and the ocean is only another hundred feet to the rear. I figured some friends might like to go along too, so I put the word out I needed a small squadron of RV's to start the adventure. Only RV's would be allowed, because we needed "total" performance to challenge the Devil in the Triangle.
Suggesting this adventure to friends got many replies. When the final roll call came in, it looked like three RV's would make the trip and late May looked most favorable for warmer waters for the scuba divers in the group. High season rates were over by this time and that is always good for RVer's too. Gary and Carolyn Zilik from Colorado, Laird Owens from California , and Jim & Vicki Baker from Kansas were the final three RV's to depart on the Bermuda Triangle Adventure.
Jim & Vicki Baker ...................Gary & Carolyn Zilik...........................Laird Owens
A trip like this takes lots of planning. I researched fully the paperwork required and after hearing,"No Problem Mon" at least twenty times, had the requirements sorted out. Things that had to be done included securing permission to fly an experimental aircraft to the Bahamas. We started the paperwork with the Bahamas Aviation Authority about three months in advance of our departure. We didn't get all the paperwork back until the last week before we left, even though we called, e-mailed and faxed requests weekly. I was able to secure a waiver for all the planes in our group so none of us had to buy the "Radio Station License" normally required. I also convinced the Bahamas Aviation Authority to allow copies of our Repairman's Certificates to be sent to them rather than their normal requirement to have an A&P sign a letter stating we as the pilot are qualified to do repair work on our own aircraft. Another paperwork requirement was a U.S. Customs decal. This cost twenty-five dollars and was relatively painless as you can order them on-line . Getting all the maps, updating the GPS's data-bases, checking the airplanes very thoroughly, making motel reservations, e-mailing back and forth, and looking at long term weather the weeks before departure was the easy part. All this took up the last few weeks before we departed on our Bermuda Triangle Adventure.
We all decided to meet in Ft. Pierce, Florida on a Friday. We could all get together there for the evening and work out last minute over water details and make sure we filled out and filed the International Flight Plans correctly. Flying inland, most of us don't routinely look at requirements to fly through the Air Defense Identification Zones. Discrete transponder codes and strict protocol must be followed lest we find ourselves in a dogfight with the U.S. military version of the RV (I'm convinced I could out turn the best of the fighters we have, but maybe not a sidewinder). We can plan most aspects of flying, but not weather. The weather turned south and looked like if we waited till Friday to depart, we might not get to Florida till Monday. Gary and I decided to leave together from my house on Thursday with the idea of going around the south side of a big low-pressure system that was moving southeast into our route for Friday. We figured we could get ahead of it Thursday and then have a simple time on Friday to continue to Ft. Pierce to meet Laird. Laird was leaving on Thursday with the same idea we had and he left early that morning and made it to Jackson, Mississippi after a little scud running through the front that extended south from the low. Gary flew down from Colorado to my house around noon. After topping tanks, we left a little after noon heading southeast and made it around the southern part of the low seeing speeds of 220 knots at ten to twelve thousand feet. We finally had to let down to one thousand feet and do a little scud running through Arkansas to get past the front because we could not top the clouds even at 14,000 feet. Gary and I stopped in Pine Bluff, Arkansas for our first fuel stop. We decided to press on, even though there was not much daylight left, to get as far in front of the cold front as possible. We ended up at Meridian, Mississippi and landed a few minutes after sunset. Gary was working the radios and talking to the tower calling in as a flight of two while I was working the FBO for hanger space on the Unicom frequency. I asked Gary and Carolyn what it would be worth to them if I got a free hanger for the evening and Gary said he'd buy dinner if I had that much pull when we landed. He didn't ever know I already had the hanger request in and approved by the FBO before I baited him. I don't remember now whether he bought dinner or not. We did get directed to the hanger before we even shut down. The FBO at Meridian, Mississippi treated us very well!
Even with all the advance planning, I goofed up! I had written everyone's Cell numbers down on a piece of paper so we could stay in touch. Somehow, I wrote Laird's home number down instead of his Cell. We called a bunch of times and never got in touch with him. Gary and I were concerned after reviewing weather in Meridian, that another weather system was moving into the Bahamas and looked nasty. We were thinking we should leave real early from Meridian, Mississippi Friday morning and try to go all the way to Pittstown Point on Friday rather than staying overnight at Ft. Pierce, Florida like we had planned earlier. The weather man was saying if we didn't get to the southern Bahamas by Friday night, we might not get there for a week, because they thought a stationary front would stall out about two hundred miles off shore. Great! We had a plan, but it wasn't our previously agreed upon plan with Laird and we couldn’t get hold of him. We didn't even know if he got through the front! Finally, Friday morning, Laird called Gary's Cell and we let him know the new plan. We didn't even know where Laird had ended up the previous night till he called. Since he was a couple of hundred miles behind us, we had to keep moving to make our plan of flying from Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi to Crooked Island, Bahamas in one day work. Laird ended up making it non-stop from Jackson, Mississippi to Ft. Pierce, Florida while Gary and I ran on the safer "liquid" type fuel all the way from Meridian, Mississippi. Gary and I were able to talk enroute with Laird and compare different radios and antenna combinations at two hundred plus mile range. Gary and I landed at Ft. Pierce about an hour before Laird and fueled up and ate a quick sandwich while mulling over the weather before he landed. It still looked bad if we didn't leave Friday. Laird finally showed up about "thirty minutes" before his -6 became a glider after consuming all the fumes that his tanks had left. He filled up, grabbed a snack while I filed all three of our International flight plans to save time, and we were back in the air within thirty minutes of Laird's landing. The adventure was really going to happen!
Our route planning from Ft. Pierce, Florida was to head down the coast to West Palm Beach and then turn out over the ocean to Bimini Island. I've got a Stec system thirty autopilot in my -6 and I was leading the way. When it was time to turn out over the water, I told everyone we were going to turn "now" and turned my heading bug to the new heading to Bimini. When I got to my new heading I hit the Nav button and my RV turned back toward land and to it's previous heading (I hadn't entered the next waypoint). This elicited much talk over the radio. "Does George know something we should?", and "Maybe it's telling us something" etc. etc. Heading out over the open ocean in a little airplane you built in your garage DOES cause strange emotions to surface. Is the engine running just a little rough? What's that noise? Will this life-vest really float me? I know Gary, Carolyn, Laird and Vicki were having the same thoughts too! The feeling is surreal, something you built in you garage that is able to transport you on this type of adventure. We're in the Bermuda Triangle now, all the RV's in formation, and we are taking on the Devil's Triangle. The weatherman said our flight would be a piece of cake today too.
Florida to Bimini was a piece of cake. Bimini to Andros Island, piece of cake too, but what's this towering cumulus doing in front of us. It is not supposed to be here because the weather briefing said things were clear. No problem, we'll just let down and go under it! Wrong! You see, late in the day the sun has heated up the islands land mass much more than the water that stays the same temperature twenty-four hours a day. Because of this phenomenon, heated air rises over the land and the air to replace it comes from the air over the ocean. Because this air is almost 100% saturated with moisture it condenses out as it cools while rising and this day the clouds looked nasty. There was lightning and rain and even though all three of us had let down to 500 feet, our eyes told us we weren't going under to the other side of the island. The legend of the Devil's triangle had hit us. I live in the Mid-west and deal with big thunderstorms all summer long so I had a plan of sidestepping this storm. We just flew over the water where there were no clouds and went around Andros Island to the south. We were in the Bahamas! "NO PROBLEM MON"! By this time I think all of us were thinking about the stories of compasses spinning and the clouds swallowing up people and planes. There was that fear of the unknown in the back of our minds and thinking we were going to be part of the legend of the Bermuda Triangle too. Since we were planning on stopping at Moss Town in the Exuma's to clear Customs; this detour didn't slow us down too much either. Did I say GPS sure makes all this much easier?
After making it around the south side of Andros Island, we headed more easterly again. This route crossed a missile firing range. Gary and I had checked out the requirement to fly through it earlier, which in our case required nothing because of the time of day. Gary and I started joking on the radio about the discrete transponder code the Bahamas Aviation Authority had given us in our permission papers. We agreed we should enter the codes in our transponders to avoid being targeted by missiles. Laird said,"Guys, are you kidding because I didn't get a code in my papers?" We ended up having more than a little fun with Laird about the missile range, but when we got close enough we finally told Laird we were just kidding and we didn't need any special codes or permission. There is a special requirement while flying to the Bahamas however. You have to land at approved "airports of entry" to go through customs and immigration before traveling on. We used Moss Town for our Airport of Entry. Our landing went pretty smooth and fuel was topped off ($3.25 per gallon). They knew we were coming from our flight plans. We filled out the paper work and bid the very helpful customs and immigration folk's good day. Our outbound trip through the Bermuda Triangle was coming to a close now, but so was the day. Looking with our eyes in the direction we needed to go looked terrible. Flight Service is totally non-existent in the Bahamas, but the local people said it would be ok. Taking their word, we all departed with all our paperwork in order and our "Cruising Permits" in hand. We flew over to Long Island through increasingly hazy skies and then headed out over the last thirty miles of deep open water to Crooked Island. It started to rain. "This is not good", I think. I was almost ready to suggest turning around because I was the only IFR rated pilot and I didn't want to lead the group into haze and rain over the ocean where the sky and water are the same color and the sun setting lower all the time. I saw the GPS reading only twenty more miles when I told my wife we were turning around.
Gary came on the radio and said, "Is that Crooked Island ahead"? With the rain, I just knew we couldn't see twenty miles but there sure looked to be an island up ahead, or an awful big ship. We flew the rest of the way in light rain. I still don't know how we could see that far in waning light and rain to boot, but then again, we were in the Bermuda Triangle! The requisite fly-by and observation pass was made down the runway and all of us landed. All the help comes out to watch aircraft land. We thought this strange till we found out later that many aircraft have crashed on the short runway that begins twenty feet from the water's edge!
Everyone was waving at us when we taxied in, so we waved back. As soon as we opened our canopies we discovered they weren't waving at us, they were waving to keep the mosquito's away! Bug spray was the first agenda after getting out of our RV's. Talk about a LONG day! Mississippi to the southern tip of the Bahamas with two major stops in little airplanes we built in our garage. No one would believe we built them in our garage either……… A complementary Rum Punch after the tie-downs and off for a shower we went. We returned shortly for a GREAT Meal. We all slept very well the first night at Pittstown Point on Crooked Island.
Remember the nasty weather I talked about that the weatherman said was to walk into the Bahamas on Saturday? Well it did, and boy did it! We went scuba diving early in the day and then slowly the weather just got worse and worse. Along about five o'clock, it started raining VERY hard. It rained so hard and the wind blew so violently that the canopy covers were blown off our RV's. Gary forgot to bring his tie down ropes, and the makeshift material he found to use as rope was getting severely tested. We figured the wind blew around sixty-five miles per hour and the rain gauge showed over five inches in just two hours. All the help kept going to the windows and looking out. I asked a couple of them if this was a "normal" rain. They all said, "Only during a hurricane does it rain this hard "MON" and the wind isn't blowing near hard enough for this to be a hurricane!" We kept looking out the window and watched a lagoon of water form and move upward around our RV's and I noticed Laird's controls flopping back and forth in the violent wind. Laird had to venture out into the storm, remove his shirt and socks, and jam them between the control surfaces and primary structure to lock them against the wind. There was a slight lull in the storm about one hour into the first wave and we all went out and put our canopy covers back on and tied our controls better. Gary and I used the seat belts to pull the control stick back and secure it. We all discussed moving our planes, but there wasn't really any higher ground anywhere close to the runway, and another nasty dark cloud was moving in on us anyway. We figured we'd just have to take our chances. We went back inside the lodge, which is only about 100 feet from the runway, and ate supper while the second wave hit. When it was over, the water was OVER the top of the wheel pants on my RV.
Just a little humorous side note inserted here is necessary. Those who build RV's understand how Van is able to calculate things very closely. Things like sending twenty feet of aluminum tubing when you need nineteen feet ten inches to build your airplane are pretty normal. Well, I'm here to tell you that I questioned whether the new pressure recovery wheel pants would float a RV. I knew Van wouldn't undercalculate their floatation, but they just looked too small. Van did his homework correctly though, and figured it dead-on. You'll notice from the pictures that none of the RV's sank, but the wheel pants are pretty close to going under!
(For some reason, all the help came out and watched us "swimming" with our airplanes. They were ALL laughing their heads off! We were just making the best of a BAD situation. We HAD come to enjoy the water..........right? Another place for a RV grin!)
So, after all this excitement (which I'd have taken as enough for the whole trip), we took some pictures feeling the storm was over. After only taking a few pictures, it got dark and round three hit! This wave contained more tremendous winds that blew palm trees over. A tornado hit about a quarter mile from the runway and destroyed parts of houses, buildings and some trees. Coconuts were rolling across the sand like bowling balls! The sky began to drop "granite rain" also. Now this was interesting! All the help were at the windows and doors. None of them knew what the clunks and knocks on the roof were. Finally, a couple of them asked us what the "white" stones falling on the ground were! None of them had ever seen hail in their entire lives! A couple of them went out and picked up some hail and put it in their mouth not believing we were telling them the truth about hail being ice. Only in the Bermuda Triangle....
When I went to my room about ten o'clock, the water was clear over the top of my white navigation light on the tail. Laird's flaps were about a half-inch from going under water too. Gary's "tricycle" was the only airplane fuselage that remained out of the water (is this why people buy the new and improved version of the RV-6?)! There was nothing to do but go to bed! The storm ended about three o'clock in the morning. When I went to look at the RV's at sunrise, only about one inch of water remained around our planes. Luckily, all the water was fresh rainwater and not salt water and the sandy soil drained quickly once it quit raining. I talked to the help that morning and no one remembered ever seeing water stand where we had tied down! They estimated it had rained between ten and fifteen inches during the whole storm. Damage to our RV's: NONE! Unbelievable is all we could think.
We did find out why the FAB airbox is supposed to have a hole drilled in the bottom of it. Gary had built his fiberglass airbox without drilling the drain hole and when he tried to start his engine, he got a mild hydraulic lock from the water pooled in it being sucked up through the carburator. He immediately stopped and we diagnosed the problem and then punched a hole in the fiberglass bottom with a sharp tool to let the water drain. We all went flying that morning. There was not a cloud in the sky and the wind was right down the runway at five miles per hour. The temperature was eighty degrees and the air was glass smooth. We WERE in paradise "MON", remember?
After flying an hour to really dry the planes out we tied them down on the other side of the runway. I'm not sure why, since it hadn't rained that hard in twenty years. I put my RV through many "unusual attitudes" wanting to thoroughly drain all the water out of my fuselage while in the air. For some reason, I became a local hero for the rest of the week we spent on the island. I was the pilot who did all the "Flip-d-Flops"! Everywhere we went, people would come up to us and wanted to shake my hand. It was an honor…
The rest of the week we spent on Crooked Island was pretty boring compared to our second day. We like to scuba dive and made about fifteen dives while there. We saw sharks on ten of the dives. A local couple took us to their home one evening and prepared a personal meal for us after having their daughter give us a two-hour tour of the island in their van. We flew local hops to the surrounding islands a few times landing at isolated airstrips. We took cabs to town and had lunches and generally just hung out. Low level "down the beach flying" was the main entertainment when close to shore. The water is just AWESOME! It is so beautiful and the colors are indescribable while flying low over the white sand. Of course Laird and I were both calling out birds as "Bogies" the whole time. After four bird strikes myself and Laird's experience with the Hawk through his canopy as well as another bird strike, neither of us will ever be the same when there are birds around. By the end of the week, all of us were just getting accustomed to "Island Time" when we had to think about leaving.
Getting weather reports in the out islands is about impossible. Luckily, the girl that ran the resort had a personal computer that she let us use. Logging on the last couple days we were there, we found out the stationary front that we had figured would be long gone was still there about half way between the mainland and us. We hadn't experienced a cloudy day after the first two, but we had to make some decisions on heading back to the mainland. It looked to me like we might be able to over-fly the fairly narrow band of clouds between the mainland and us. It also looked like if we didn't go now, we would be sitting for three or four days while the front made it's way south. All three of us talked the plan over very seriously the last morning for an hour and finally decided we would try it. If we couldn't go over it safely we would return. All planes were loaded up, good-bye's given, and we headed to Stella Mares on Long Island to top our tanks with Green 100-130 Venezuela fuel and Customs/Immigration sign out. We also put twelve-inch N-numbers on our airplanes sides with electrical tape while at Stella Mares so we could legally enter the Air Defense Identification Zone of the United States. The flight back was in some ways like the trip out. It was ninety- percent boredom with ten- percent adrenaline.
Things that would never bother you over land are just different over water! Clear sky's prevailed except for the fifty-mile band of clouds that we had to go over to get to clear skies on the other side in Florida. Gary had a fixed pitch prop and Laird and I had constant speeds. Being as heavy as we all were, climb rates were getting pretty anemic for Gary as we approached the level we had to climb to. Finally, we slipped over the top edge of the clouds and immediately started down hill on a beeline toward Bimini. By the time we got there, the ground and water was visible so our feelings were more comfortable for the rest of the way to Ft. Pierce, Florida to clear customs. You must file an international flight plan to enter the U.S. and when about fifteen minutes from entering the Air Defense Identification Zone call ATC for a discrete transponder code which we all did. You also have to land within thirty minutes of your proposed arrival time or the U.S. Customs can fine you. Customs made all of us take EVERYTHING out of our planes. We each hauled it inside figuring they would want to look it over. They didn't even open one bag! No one looked at our airplanes either! Laird got reprimanded for using a cell phone in a Customs building but other than the fact we had to completely unload and reload ALL our stuff, re-entry was a non-event.
We topped off fuel and headed to Cape Kennedy that afternoon. Because weather had forced us to leave Pittstown Point a day early, we were able to spend the whole next day touring the Cape Kennedy complex. The complex is something everyone needs to see! All the displays are pretty awesome stuff.
The next morning brought fog into our life. We initially had planned to go see Kermit Weeks museum and enjoy a RV Fly-In there, but by the time the fog lifted around noon we all decided to just head toward home and see where we ended up. Gary and I ended up making it from Cape Kennedy to my place before dark! Isn't that awesome? Little airplanes that we built in our garage that will take you from Cape Kennedy to Northwestern Kansas in an AFTERNOON of flying! Laird split off from Gary and me somewhere in Arkansas and ended up spending the night in western Texas stopped by a line of thunderstorms. Gary and Laird flew the rest of the way to their homes the next day.
What can we say? I think Laird flew close to seven thousand miles and Gary and I around five thousand. We spent a week flying in the Bermuda Triangle. We didn't see our compasses spin but we saw fog banks that could swallow up a ship or a squadron of planes. We flew above thirty thousand-feet deep seas as well as experiencing the worst rainstorm I've ever seen. We dove with sharks and saw some of the most beautiful beaches and coastlines we'll ever fly over. We made some new friends and ate some awesome meals. We partied a little and relaxed a lot. Experiencing the feeling you get flying on a trip like this with an airplane you built yourself in your garage at home is something I can't describe. It is like the first flight in your airplane, but different. It's just unbelievable, indescribable, but awesome! Bottom line: We all flew across the United States to the "Devil's Triangle". We flew in the BERMUDA TRIANGLE. We read stories about it and saw the adventure of it and now we can add our adventure and stories too. We saw Cape Kennedy and so much beautiful landscape in between. All you people reading this and still building your airplaness, you have no idea how much fun you're going to have traveling in your new airplanes.
And to Van: Thanks for making this GREAT airplane for us to build!
Without your RV's, we would not be able to have these beautiful experiences.
Keep hammering those rivets! It's worth it……..
Adventure participants:
Jim & Vicki Baker, Gary & Carolyn Zilik, & Laird Owens
...Please e-mail us with comments or questions...
(note: some pictures may be clicked for larger size)
...We're Looking to the Horizon for Another Adventure....
