Nantucket

After work, I preflighted Dean's Warrior, filled it up and got everything ready for our passengers. We took went with a coworker Tony and his wife Kim. Everyone arrived 45 mins later and got in the plane. The weather was perfect CAVOK.

We took off and climbed to 7,500 for a great view of Groton, Providence, Newport, Martha's Vineyard and of course Nantucket. Enroute we had some problems with the alternator kicking offline. Turning it off and then back on again seemed to solve the problem so we started turning off unnecessary electronics to try to take some load off of it. That only made things worse. Now it kicked offline every minute or so. We started turning things back on putting even more of a load on the system and it was fine for the rest of the flight. Dean confirmed that as long as there's a moderate load on it, it stays online. In any case, it didn't affect the flight after making the adjustments so we continued on.

We began our comfortable descent and stared out the window at how pretty and natural the island looked. We reported a 4 mile right base for 24, landed and parked. We were in a row with Citations, Gulfstreams and King Airs. We looked so small and out of place. "Small plane but BIG pride" Dean said. We checked in with the FBO and grabbed a cab into town. I've never been to Nantucket before however I have been to the Vineyard and they're very similar in a lot of ways however I must say that Nantucket wins the trophy for natural beauty and wealth. I could not believe the size of some of the houses as well as the landscape of the property etc.

Tony showed us the Maria Mitchell House with the astronomy dome. Apparently that woman did a lot of work both related and unrelated to science for Nantucket. He said that she even saved the church from burning down at one time. Tony's love for Nantucket was obvious as he was enthusiastically giving facts and details about anything in sight.

We had dinner at The Atlantic Cafe which was very good. We walked around a bit more and saw some people playing guitar out on the street. It felt like a Friday night not a Tuesday night. Everyone was just having a blast....maybe they're all on vacation-who knows?

We grabbed a cab back to the airport. The cab driver gave us some interesting facts about the island as well. "There's not a single stoplight or flashing light on the island and the fastest speedlimit is 45."

We got back to the airport and did a preflight and departed. Again, the weather was perfect. For the first time in my life, we could very easily see the entire outline of the Milky Way in the sky. To the average person, it looks like a streak of clouds but it's really billions of stars in the galaxy. Everyone in the plane was completely amazed by it. Aside from that, the flight home was extremely quiet and relaxing. ATC was not busy at all. We flew from MVY to GON without hearing a single transmission. I asked PVD_APP for our groundspeed just to see if our radios were even working and they were.

We landed back at MMK, tied up the plane and all decided that there's nothing cooler in the world than flying. "Who would have though this morning at work that tonight we'd be eating dinner on Nantucket" was Tony's phrase for the night. That's the beauty of flying.