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Card's Grand Turk Trip 2013

Scoot and Cookie are home! We're getting ready to fall into our own bed for the night, as is Watson (oh, it seems that he beat us to it). I think we've been 'on the road' for something like 13hrs. I'll spend my entire day tomorrow writing to catch up and picture processing. Sorry, I'm no Rosie, when I'm done, I'm done. I'll leave you with these few golden nuggets for tonight. Simply amazing!

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Customs

Scott,

I don't know if I missed it, but how was customs upon re-entry? Wait time, attitude? Are they letting you disembark and stay with the plane, and where did you come back in through. From the stories I have heard from friends I don't wanna wet my pants sitting in the plane for 2 hours.
 
I'm really curious about re-entry too. Glad you're all home safe and sound! Tons of "Facebook Envy" here... :cool:
 
Scott,

I don't know if I missed it, but how was customs upon re-entry? Wait time, attitude? Are they letting you disembark and stay with the plane, and where did you come back in through. From the stories I have heard from friends I don't wanna wet my pants sitting in the plane for 2 hours.

I'm really curious about re-entry too. Glad you're all home safe and sound! Tons of "Facebook Envy" here... :cool:

I'm writing as fast as I can this morning. It is coming. Stay tuned.
 
Tuesday Return part 1

It looks like I left off on post #35 around Monday night April 16, the night before leaving the islands. We’ll pick up there. The next part of the adventure begins and involves my favorite part, flying. It isn’t over until Tanya, Watson, and I are back home in our own beds.

Tuesday morning, the two vans were ready and waiting for us fifteen minutes early. That was a nice surprise and a first for anything being ahead of “schedule” on the islands. We loaded up about twelve people and were rolling to the airport by 7:45am. In the islands, these taxi rides are per-person. This one was $7per. All airplanes untied and prepared for the flight. No mechanical issues that I’m aware of. Each of the pilots then walked up to talk to the tower controller. I don’t know what went on up there since I was only “crew” and not the pilot :). I assume it was something like paying the fees and arranging the flight plan to Exuma.
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Have we said that this is “Island time” enough? Here comes the proof. Now it is time for everyone to go to the main terminal building to clear customs/immigration out of the Turks and Caicos. We find someone that points us to the area for international customs. It is a separate area like most other places with a glass electric door that is closed. They pried the door open and let us into this area where all the lights were off. Clearly nobody was home. “Someone is supposed to be here, but it doesn’t look like they are.” The person that was guiding us walked away… Uh, ok, what next.
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I think Randy went and found the airport manager, who didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He looked in the empty customs area and disappeared again. So here we sat for a little over an hour. Lots of chit, chat. “Hmm, the tower doesn’t care if we have cleared customs, nor do they have any knowledge if we’ve done so.” Uh, yeah, no thanks :).
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Finally our taxi driver from much earlier in the morning happened to wander through the terminal where we were all sitting, faithfully trying not to be frustrated tourists, as instructed by Rosie at the outset of this adventure. He asked, “You guys are still here?”. “Yep, there is no customs agent around to process us out.” “Huh!?” he replied… I told him “We are on Island Time Mon’!”, with the biggest happy smile I could muster. He got it, “Yes mon’, Island Time”. “Let me call my cousin and see if I can make something happen.” No more than fifteen minutes later, Hazel, the customs agent arrived through the front door of the terminal. The taxi driver (I forget his name), gave Hazel a little bit of a friendly ribbing, “Hazel, you were supposed to be here at 8am.” If you’re keeping track of time, I think this was about 10am now. Not too bad at all actually. Hazel was nice. We handed her our three copies each of General Declarations which she stamped and signed. One for her, one for another guy sitting there, and one for us.
Back to the airplanes, Alpha flight assembled for one final brief of the departure. Cookie was lead, #2 Bill Wootton, #3 Taco (Dave & Alina Buono), #3 Greg and Robin Vouga. (I have a chant still ringing in my head: Vo-ga, Vo-ga, Vo-ga!) We all lined up on the runway and launched at about five second intervals. Everybody was aboard before the turn to downwind. This was a very good indicator that everybody was prepared and ready to GO. The flight to Great Exuma was a pleasure.
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Exuma is technically an uncontrolled field, but they do have an operating “advisory” tower. Given that they operate as though they are controlled, we play along like good tourists and treat them as such. We called a four ship inbound and everyone made their separation in the base and final turns exactly as briefed. We collected the flight on the taxiway. I made one little comment on company freq. “common’ Taco, make it look good”, he straightened up to comply. With a nice slow taxi of our four-ship to the ramp we did a flank turn and shut down. I bet it looked pretty good.
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Immediately at shutdown on the ramp at Exuma, they were waiting for us. The fuel truck was already positioned and rolling toward Lead and Jermaine, the FBO coordinator that we’ve been working with, was walking toward us with a stack of pink papers in his hands. When we opened the canopy, he was right there and said “Hello Tanya!” with that big smile of his. “It is great to see you. Did you have a good flight?” “Here are your papers, this is all you need. You are set.” Holy cow. Nothing to sign, no other “agents” of any kind to see. This was all of the paperwork that was needed to clear into the Bahamas from the Turks and Caicos and back out of the Bahamas to the US. Here is my takeaway, The Bahamas love you and want you to come visit.
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All of the pictures from the Tuesday Return:
https://picasaweb.google.com/100499...authkey=Gv1sRgCMGvw-n2o_PX7AE&feat=directlink
 
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Tuesday Return part 2

We left the Vougas who continued to Nassau from Exuma by themselves for the rest of their vacation.
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We launched our three ship with Bill Wootton and Taco headed for our entry at Fort Pierce, FL. It was another easy direct flight that took us over Nassau. Flight plans were opened with Miami radio coming out of Exuma and sequential squawk codes were given to each airplane. We coupled up with Miami Center after passing Nassau and they gave Lead a different squawk code and asked that all the others go to standby. That is how we entered the ADIZ. We called a flight of three RVs inbound to Fort Pierce and they asked if we would be requesting an overhead. <grin> “Negative, we’ll take our spacing in the pattern.”
We parked in the “penalty box” at customs and hopped out with our bags. This an area on the ramp directly in front of the customs building that is bounded by a big red line. We learned from last time through here that once you are in the box, you are in customs and can deplane and enter the office. It was a very simple inspection of our passports and a couple simple questions like “Who is the pilot?” “Do you have your pilot’s license on you?” “Welcome back. If you are not stopped on your way out for baggage inspection, proceed to your airplane through that exit over there.” And that was it. Super easy.
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We immediately pulled our airplanes out of the red box and went into the restaurant on the field to hatch the next plan. On to St. Augustine for the night. The NASA Shuttle Landing Facility was on the way and Tanya came up with the idea of seeing if we could do a low pass over the runway. We got setup with the approach control facility. They were very accommodating and helpful. It went something like this: “Approach, 4822C flight.” “4822C flight, go ahead.” “Yes mam, I understand that it might be possible to do a low approach over the length of the runway at the Shuttle Landing Facility. Is that something that we could do today?” “Um, Sure. The tower is closed on the field. Just be certain not to touch down during your low approach. Are you familiar with the restricted airspace to the east of the field?” “Negative we’re not familiar but we see it on the map.” “Ok, the restricted just to the east of the field is hot, you should be careful not to stray into it. I can give you vectors to the runway if you don’t have it on a moving map or something.” She was very kind and prepared to be as helpful as possible to ‘make our day’. “We have it on a few moving maps onboard and can maintain our own guidance. Just to clarify, R-2935 and R-2943 are cold, and R-2932 and R-2933 are hot?” “Affirmative. 4822C and flight are cleared to descend at pilot's discretion to Space Coast Regional for a low approach, not to touch down. Maintain the squawk, change to advisory approved and return this frequency on the climb.” “4822C and flight … return this frequency on the other side.”
Taco took the lead here in hopes of getting some wingtip video. Little did we know that the batteries on the camera had already died. For some reason, whatever moving map that he was looking at didn’t show the restricted space that we were avoiding. He made a minor course adjustment… “Taco, where are you going!” “I’m making a small adjustment to intercept a long final.” “Negative on the long final. Restricted to avoid. Left turn now to aim for the approach end of the runway.” Good wingman that follows commands. All good.
So we rolled in on short final to the runway at around 95kts I think. At this point I was in fingertip right at low level and just highly focused on the task at hand.
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I’m sure my experience was very different than most others flying the length of the runway as a single ship. I never saw the full length or anything surrounding. Obviously I was busy flying. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, but I’m very grateful to Alina Buono for taking pictures. It was late in the day, the sun was in the perfect position and there was a skilled button pusher behind the camera. I think those pictures make the top of my treasured stack at this time. So, we flew the length of the three mile long runway with Bill in trail. I believe he also has video from atop his glare shield.
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You might want to go check out this full collection over here if you’re interested.
https://picasaweb.google.com/100499...&authkey=Gv1sRgCMycn-7bwMWjQg&feat=directlink

We landed at St. Augustine for food and some sleep after a long day. The controllers there were exceptionally nice and welcomed us with open arms. The Galaxy Aviation FBO was apparently out of normal tie-down and hangar space, so they took us to their “overflow tie-downs”.
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After we shut down, they pointed to an Army Blackhawk on the ramp about 50 yards in front of us and explained that there would be six more coming in to land there tonight and that they would probably all land directly to the ramp right there. The tie-downs were just standard wire rope with some of the steal anchors already snapped off… Woah, I started asking a bunch of questions about any other locations that we could tie down. This was sounding like a very bad situation to me. It was apparently a top secret seal team or something that was going to be landing here, so details were not forthcoming at all. There was also a “United States of America” G5 on the ramp too. Bill was comfortable and already had his airplane tied down by now. I was still working the situation with the ramp crew when a guy in a black Tahoe pulled up, rolled down the dark tinted window and asked another ramp guy “They’re tying those down right?” as he inspected us carefully, peering through his dark sunglasses. My guess is that this guy was some kind of advance security.
I engaged some of the new skills that I’ve been practicing and walked over to the guy in the Tahoe and cheerfully asked “So, the US government has insurance if they flip my airplane right?” The guy with the sunglasses replied with the stiffest upper lip that he had, “Nope, park at your own risk. Be aware that you absolutely cannot come back to this ramp this evening as it will be secured, and I highly recommend that you tie those planes down tight.” “Believe me we will.” I asked a few more friendly questions of the head rampie about the FBO’s lease of this ramp, etc. We kept talking and Mr. Sunglasses finally started to loosen up after he asked where we were coming from and I told him. The conversation morphed into the fact that we built these airplanes in our garage and flew them to the Turks and Caicos and back. They are very important to us. Mr. Sunglasses and the rampie agreed that they would “call the tower” and see if they could arrange for the arriving helicopters to do a ground taxi with word that we were parked here.
We took a cab into town, hotel, food, bed. Happy to be back in the US, but we’re not home yet.
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I've been dying to ask, "When did Bolt become Taco"? I clearly remember the callsign of Bolt being bestowed on Mr. Buono. :D
 
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I've been dying to ask, "When did Bolt become Taco"? I clearly remember the callsign of Bolt being bestowed on Mr. Buono. :D

Taco pre-dated Bolt by far. Then Jarhead recently tried to bestow yet another callsign of "Cannibal". We declared a foul ball on this trip with concurrence form others (Rosie). And so, history has been corrected to be "Taco", with Alina's newly applied "Belle" :)

From Rosie: Last time I flew with Dave Bouno was on our 2011 trip to Great Exuma and he was then (and still is) 'Taco'. Who is Bolt? :)

Bolt is the guy that showed up at my mini formation clinic weekend with a right stick that was not secured and handed me his airplane to fly in a formation demonstration. Once back on the ground, "Here is a bolt." "Now install it before we do any more flying this weekend." :).
 
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Wasn't an Original

OMG what a hoot! Who would have thought.... ask and you shall receive...

The thought was thanks to another VAFer who posted they had made the pass. Sorry - can't remember who did so. I wouldn't have thought it possible with it being smack dab in the middle of 4 restricted area. As I was looking at the track from Fort Pierce to St. Augustine, there was the facility marked on the map and that post came flooding back.
 
Vlad

I believe I saw a post from Vlad when he did it and then others since then.

Seems like a cool thing to do if you are in the neighborhood. That is one long runway.
 
Great Job Tanya

My hat is 'off' to Tanya Card who assumed 'Lead' duties for the return flight home to Florida after the departure of our group last Friday:

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!

You and Scott are hereby officially 'blessed' as Over-Water Veterans, and I'm looking forward to our 2015 Cayman Islands/Belize flying adventure :) Rosie

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Wednesday - final push for home part 1

Here we go. The final push for home on Wednesday April 17 2013.
Dave and Alina Buono and Tanya and I met in the hotel lobby at 7:30am in St. Augustine for breakfast. Food and a plan to head our now two ship to Foley Alabama to have an early lunch at Lambert?s was hatched. Bill had a separate plan to go to Louisiana today and wasn?t prepared for any IFR possibilities so he was going to stay put for a while. We were rolling to the airport via taxi by about 8:15am. Behold, our airplanes were still where we left them and didn?t seem to have even been jiggled by the now six helicopters that shared the ramp as promised. I would bet a paycheck that our aircraft were carefully inspected sometime during the night.

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We launched with Taco as #2 through a little early morning crud. Along the way across the panhandle of Florida and into Alabama the sky was very hazy with reduced visibility. I believe most of it was smoke from fires south of the border. Taco commented during our little jaunt offshore across the gulf, ?It sure is easy to see how a non-instrument rated pilot could get into this and simply crash right into the ocean.? It is true, there was almost no horizon reference, but still plenty of technical VFR visibility. Tanya noticed that the coastline isn?t anywhere near as pretty here.

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Coming over Pensacola NAS we got cleared for decent at pilot?s discretion into Foley. There was a scattered to broken layer at about 2500? that we had to work our way through. The good wingman hung in as we maneuvered down to about 1000? for a GPS 45 to downwind. It was one of those arrivals where nobody saw the airport until we rolled out on downwind just because we were a little low and the trees hid it well.
On the ground at Foley, the airport manager greeted us with a smile. He was a really nice guy and seemed to know something about RVs. On the ramp there was some activity surrounding a Coast Guard chopper. I thought about going over there to check it out but the Coasties seemed pretty busy. I was thinking about.. ?Hi guys, how is it going? Did you break it or something?? It is a very good thing I didn?t.

We went to lunch at Lambert?s as Tanya had been wanting to do for quite some time. We ate about a third of what they tried to stuff in us, disposed of about a third, and brought some back with us. When we got back to the airport from lunch they were breaking down the helicopter for ground transport. The airport manager explained that it landed here last night and apparently they had a hard landing with subsequent evaluation of the data recorder that dictated that it wouldn?t be flown out. Whew, close call for me :). They had it packaged and on the trailer in just a few minutes. It was interesting to see. Apparently they knew what they were doing.

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This was goodbye to our last remaining wingman as we headed direct to San Antonio to pickup Watson and the Buonos headed to Dallas. This would be a very long leg for us at the limits of our fuel range given the expected headwinds so we conserved fuel the whole way. We did a slow cruise in hopes of making it without a fuel stop but with the option to stop short if needed. We found pretty consistent headwinds of about 25kts which was almost 20kts more than was forecast. After we topped the Houston class B, we were really looking at fuel carefully. We had been flying over a pretty solid undercast layer all around the Houston area and the weather wasn?t improving as expected at San Antonio. There were a few holes in the clouds around La Grange so we pulled the plug and did a steep spiral from 8000? right down on top of Fayette Regional airport for fuel. The bases were at about 2000? and the general weather not all that great. On the ground at the secluded fuel pump, we gave each other a high five for a good decision and enjoyed the relief of being on the ground with full tanks and no longer in the air calculating fuel.

On the ground at Fayette
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Sorry, but that is the last picture from this adventure, but we?re not done yet.
 
The next two hours were the most challenging of the entire trip since we left home almost two weeks ago. Here is what we wanted to do:

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Weather along all parts of this route was mostly overcast with bases about 2300’ to 1200’ and tops around 6500’. There wasn’t any convection, some areas of visibility 3-4mi in mist. This was not a VFR trip for us with two instrument tickets aboard, however, if I had been solo this late in the day, I probably would have either skipped SAT and headed straight home, or left it on the ground there and called my support crew to come and get me D-> comfy bed. So, we lifted off and were able to climb to about 2400’, contacted approach and got a local IFR into San Antonio. The clouds were pretty dark and there was a little precip in them. Of course, it was bumpy too. We got a climb to 6000’ direct MARCS for the Rodeo 1 arrival. Great, smack dab in the middle of the bumps. Mmmmm… Right in here, we realized that with all of the IFR work that we’ve done in the past few years, neither of us had ever flown a published arrival in actual IMC. Now was as good a time as any. We were all spooled up and in our own back yard. One person flying the airplane with the other working charts, avionics, and radios. It is a very powerful combination that we use on almost all flights. Ask any of the recent wingmen, it is sometimes alarming at how well it works.

After CRISS, fly 295deg, expect vectors for the ILS runway 12R. Okey, dokey. Bumpdy, bumpdy, bumpdy through the clouds we went. Tanya said, “Wow, this San Antonio approach controller is Busy!” He was indeed working hard. “22C, for planning purposes, what will be your final approach speed?” … We hadn’t even been turned for the localizer yet. This was going to be interesting and we were both glad we weren’t thinking about fuel management. We got the turn for the localizer which we intercepted, only to get another turn out to the other side shortly thereafter, then back to the localizer and cleared for the approach. Clearly something wasn’t working out for his spacing. Yes, we’re still hard IMC.

We started down the glideslope. “N4822C, cancel approach clearance, turn heading…, climb maintain 6000’.” Power went in, and around we went. That was another first in the books for us. Tanya was flying this whole sequence since the fuel stop. She got some really great IMC time! I gave her a quick little bit of situational awareness with, “Cool, we’re right back exactly where we started from :).” I could tell that she had settled into the groove with the commitment required to just keep operating as we bounced along. Can you tell that I’m proud of her? I guess the sequencing came out better the second time around as we broke out at about 1300’. “San Antonio tower, 4822C has the field in sight, request a side step to land 12L for parking on the north side.” “4822C, Change runway to 12L, cleared to land 12L.”

We taxied to the new FBO Asertec which has been great to us. Tanya parked it right next to the huge hangar and shut down. Whew, another high five and smiles all around. My first comment was “We’re going to sit here at the FBO for a while before we launch for home.” I didn’t get any arguments. We went in and saw my Ma’ pulling into the parking lot with the reason we were here in the first place. Remember, I said this thing isn’t done until we’re all at home in our own bed? That includes our only child Watson (Beagle hound). In came his waggling tail with his sniffer firmly planted along the ground on the go.

One more leg. The weather still dictates an IFR run home. Clearly this was my leg. I got a local IFR from clearance delivery. With Watson loaded up, “4822C is cleared to the GTU airport via radar vectors, V550, Centex, Direct. Climb maintain 5000 feet. Departure frequency is 127.1. Squawk 1234.” Our new home airport is Breakaway 40XS and doesn’t have any approaches, so our local default is Georgetown just a few miles north. I learned on a previous trip from San Antonio clearance, “22C, I’m unable to input four character destinations, is there someplace else close to that?” So now I just ask for destination GTU when going home IFR.

Off we went, but I really didn’t want to bounce along in the muck at 5k’ all the way home for the 30 minute flight with the dog. Shortly after contacting departure, I asked for a climb to 8k’ which allowed us to pop out the top to smooth air. “22C contact Austin approach on 119.0, gooday.” We checked in and I asked how low he could get us over Breakaway as that would be our final destination. I was very clear about my intentions to shoot the approach into GTU and make the short hop home after cancelling IFR. He could get us down to 2500’ and GTU was reporting 2700’. I usually opt for the sure thing here, but this was high enough to go take a look-see, with the option to continue the planned approach. The approach controller was very happy to give me all the help in the world to make for a happy and successful outcome. “22C, decend maintain 2500’ turn left heading … vectors to put you on a close right downwind for Breakaway.” The sun is getting very low up top at this point and we’re decending through light rain in the darkish gray clouds. My mojo was flowing just fine. Tanya was feeding Watson continuous dog treats for the decent into the bumps. I swear that the controller must have been right there onboard with me, knowing that I fly the airplane from the right side. At about 2650’ Tanya commented “I can see the ground, but we’re still in it” as I’m starting to arrest my decent to 2500. We popped out the bottom of the clouds just below 2600’. The bottoms were smooth, not ragged, with visibility about four miles, no rain. I looked out the window to my right and right off the wing was home. I was on a perfect right downwind midfield. Amazing! “Approach, RV 4822C has the field in sight, we can cancel IFR at this time, Excellent show.” “22C, cancellation received, squawk VFR, frequency change approved, have a good evening.” I changed to CTAF and made my first call. Immediately I heard a friendly voice from good friend and resident, John, “Welcome home 22C, the runway is clear.” We have a deer problem in the evenings, which was the last thing on my mind this time. We have a good team though. Base, final, stopped by midfield.

And there you have it. Shortly thereafter, the final objective was achieved; everybody is happy, healthy, safe, and asleep in their own bed.

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A few other return pictures here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/100499...&authkey=Gv1sRgCM-UjIPY543_Aw&feat=directlink

Just for quick reference, I’ve been writing today’s updates with picture processing for more than eight hours solid. Beware if you choose to fully share such an adventure :). I'll now sit back with everybody else and enjoy reading about the rest of Rosie's adventure.
 
Home

Glad you guys made it home ok.

Thanks for posting pics and write ups.

I sure missed not going this trip!

Be well.
 
Thanks for all the work to do the trip write up on your vacation Scott.
Love to go along on the 2015 trip, by then our 9A will have enough time on it and I won't worry about the water crossings. Well not as much anyway, lol.
Excellent job both of you on the IFR flights. Nice to see you guys work the system so well.
 
Thanks so much for taking the time to write this so we can all live vicariously live your adventures.
 
Let me add my hearty applause as well to both you and Rosie for a reporting job very well done. It?s been an amazing shared journey, and one I hope to take first hand. Thanks!

I always feel that every great endeavor should have its own theme music, a unique leitmotif to add that special sonic dimension. All during your trip, as I?ve been reading your accounts I?ve been playing Glenn Miller?s ?Caribbean Clipper? in the background?or sometimes just in my head. IMHO it couldn?t have been more perfectly suited for the mission. I invite you to dial it up on iTunes and see if you don?t agree.

Welcome home. When's the next sortie?
 
Looks like it was a blast!!

Thanks for taking the time to write up and share. It was really enjoyable to follow you guys.
 
Whoops, I just lost a good chunk of my evening reading this thread as we dream about blue water.... and begin to hatch a plan.

There is a treasure placed for future RV'ers
 
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