The first try a few weeks ago got me less than half way with heavy over development on course and all around. Yesterday, conditions lined up perfectly with breezy WSW winds, plenty of clouds and no overdevelopment on course.
After a morning of towing and tandems I was able to talk Mitch and Campbell into attempting the New Smyrna route. We all checked out the sectional and plugged in key airspace locations and set off around 2pm.
Mitch had bad luck and landed early, while Campbell and I blazed the first leg - it seemed too easy, and it was. From the moment we turned the corner at the edge of Sanford airspace and started heading east to the beach, the lift turned to crap and the clouds were rarely working. Nothing was making sense to me and I spent an hour stuck just southeast of Deland airport while Campbell eased ahead as if he was in completely different conditions.
After dodging the huge Deland jump plane on its five mile finals and sawtoothing back and forth into the wind in order to stay out of Daytona airspace, the fourth or fifth perfect cloud I flew under started to work. 3000 feet seemed high by then and this allowed me to head south back onto the original course and get into good clouds again. I took a very conservative 5200 foot final glide in case the seabreeze was strong. I made it at 6pm with 2000 feet to play over the Atlantic before landing on the white sand and having a bucket of shrimp across the road. Even swam with a random manatee that was cruising the waves heading south.
Turns out Campbell couldn't get high in the last climb and was being conservative as well, aborting his final across the 1.5 mile swampy inland waterway thinking there could be a strong seabreeze. The seabreeze ended up only being from the south and what got me there so high could have carried him over the swamp as well, but he ended up landing on 95 in the end.
Two coasts in three days, attempting Cuba tomorrow.
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