The Bahamas are a collection of several thousand smaller and larger islands lying off the coast of Florida. A tourists paradise, it is also a great place for the private pilot.

Whilst planning my trip in 2001 it occurred to me that it would be pretty neat if I could fly over to the Bahamas. It'd be a great trip, it would be a wonderful place to try flying over water (good visibility, good rescue services!) and it'd be fun! I was fortunate that my instructor Jon agreed to accompany me as safety pilot which meant the flight would be a lot more fun!

Because Jon was willing to take the controls I was able to take a few photos. Not brilliant but all I had was a happy-snappy film camera :) They're not in the Gallery yet but are in my old Demon internet homepages (click here to open a new window). In true Oliver fashion there's not actually a photo of *me* with a plane but there is one on this site's homepage after all!

We left Winter Haven and flew south-south-east towards West Palm Beach. We'd flown down there before so I could check out the airport. West Palm Beach turned out to be so busy then that I had decided we would aim for the airport but not land.

Below an extract from the sectional chart showing the track (green lines) for my over-water crossing from West Palm Beach to Freeport. The green lines are the track lines I followed outbound from West Palm Beach (KPBI) to Freeport (MYGF) although I re-planned the return to go direct to Fort Pierce (KFPR):-

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