On Friday afternoon I was contacted by the owner of the company and told I was being shipped off to Puerto Rico for the weekend. The plan was to fly American Airlines to San Juan, stay the night at a resort on the beach, and the next morning grab a cab to the airport in Class D airspace to pick up the R-44. The plan worked.
From there, Dave Smith, the chief pilot, and I headed due East for Fajardo, PR. Our mission was to photograph boats in the Fajardo inlet. The boats would be coming from and going to: the island of Culebra and the Virgin Islands. We traveled as far East as the U.S. & British Virgin Islands (St. Thomas & St. John) to catch a sailboat regatta. Upon finding nothing, we believe the race never took place.
After all was said and done on the first day and I had flown my longest continuous flight to date (3.6 hours), we headed into Fajardo to our hotel. But..i t wasn't a hotel, it turned out to be a bed & breakfast owned by a couple from Rhode Island, located on the side of a mountain in the rainforest, not 5 miles from El Yunque, Puerto Rico's famous protected rainforest. The day ended well considering we drove 20 minutes away from the town and the only thought running through my head was when the taxi would pull over and proceed to pull out the knife.
Day 2 was not much different than the first, except that I flew left-seat in the R-44 to train for the transition to flight instructor.
Photos:
Crevasse
St. John, US VI.
Fajardo, PR.
Ruins of a Sugar Granary: St. Thomas, US VI.
"Monkey Island" East of PR, West of Culebra.
