Strings of days…

Living on Kintala was usually a low key kind of life, but there were times when we had to push pretty hard. Long days would get strung together while trying to make it far enough south to get ahead of the cold weather. Other times the push would come from trying to get out of the hurricane zone in the early summer, or get back from the Islands in time to make that push north. Then there were strings of long days that came with trying to get the boat buttoned down and secured for an incoming storm, then getting out of Dodge ourselves before the storm arrived.

There were what seemed like an endless string of days working on the boat to get it ready to launch, or to launch the next time, or the time after that. There were days strung in a seemingly endless line, each feeling like the earth had stopped in its orbit around the sun right in the middle of summer in Florida, days that made me wonder if I would feel dry or cool or comfortable ever again. Of course all such days eventually faded into memory, replaced by easy days riding to an anchor or mooring ball, watching the moon rise over an uninhabited Cay or Bay, the water so still it tricked the mind into thinking it had never really moved, or would ever move again.

Since making the decision to do this land thing for a while, we have been stringing long days together again. The push to get Kintala to Titusville, the push to get to St. Louis, Deb’s push to get Kintala ready for the broker while I pushed to get the job secured and started, and the push to get settled into the apartment. The current push is to get through the type rating training and get qualified as a Flight Instructor. Current days are spent in a class with four other pilots, all of us working to make friends with this new, and very complex, airplane. The level of experience / expertise sitting with me is kind of amazing. There is an ex-Air Force flight test pilot who then spent 17 years at Southwest airlines. Another of the class was an Airbus test pilot while another is a current Embraer test pilot. Only two of us are US pilots, and I am the only one based in this country. Germany, England, and Spain are home for some, and the other US pilot is based in and flies around Asia. This is the level of expertise that will soon be looking at me from behind the work stations.

Okay then.

American pilots fly under FAA regulations, European pilots under those of EASA. Only an EASA trained instructor can do sim work with EASA pilots, and I have been asked to do both. There are other regulatory agencies for China, Russia, and others I don’t know. There are additional qualifications that are company specific, many having their own particular operating parameters. I haven’t been tossed into those waters yet. As it stands, I have to pass two different sets of tests, one for the FAA and one for EASA. And I still have to learn how to actually operate the Sim, Graphical Flight-Deck Sim, and classroom from the instructor’s seat. All interesting challenges that look to be their own kind of fun. But all also long days of work that must be finished before reaching the goal of actually instructing again.

It feels a bit like being just a couple of days out of Marathon on the migration north to the Chesapeake Bay. A good approach then was to get up each morning, haul the anchor, enjoy that day for what it had to offer, and not think too much about the long string of days of that still lay ahead before one could settle in again, at least for a while.  After all, part of the reason for being on the boat in the first place was to travel. Wouldn't it be kind of childish to complain just because there was a little to much of it happening all at once?

I am hoping the same kind of approach will work here as well. We came this way for good reasons, and it is working out better than we had dared hope. A string of long days seems a pretty fair trade, and it isn't like such a stretch is something new.

But I could have done without the 12 inches of snow.