James hadn't seen his Lake Amphibian since December when he left it at Muskoka Airport for an engine repair; today we gave him a lift there to pick it up. This particular model being known as The Buccaneer, James has had a skull and crossbones painted on its tail (click on the picture above for illustration). A useful aircraft, when you're flying across Northern Quebec, says James. If you can land on water, you've got "runways" everywhere, there are so many lakes. As we struggled against the 30 knot head wind that extended our outward journey to two hours, he told us how, on more than one trip, he'd taken C-FBOQ as far north as Kuujjuaq for the sake of the fishing. The first time he'd tried it he'd been scared, venturing solo into that unmonitored airspace, but the thrill of that lonely freedom and untouched landscape had grown on him. The other time he was scared was in mechanical turbulence around Wabush, so extreme that the plane had tipped to an angle of 90° several times. He was glad he'd been alone in the cockpit that time, he said.
A gusty crosswind at Muskoka this morning meant that Chris had to cope with some turbulence himself, not that much, though. We hadn't been expecting any inclement weather when we set off from Rockcliffe where it was what pilots call "severe clear", but a layer of cloud had piled up over the higher land around the Haliburton Highlands which made it gloomier there, though not over the top of the cloud layer, where we were for most of the second hour.
Anyhow, closer to Ottawa—both on the way out and on the way back—the views were as splendid as I'd predicted. The last picture is of the Rideau Falls near our house:
1 comment:
Post a Comment