Visit with Julie and Pancho, and the "Bay Tour"

Saturday Michelle and I flew up to Santa Cruz (landed at nearby Watsonville) to visit with Michelle's relatives Julie, Pancho, Joan, Tom, Sarah, and Shawn at Julie and Pancho's fall party. Since we had some extra time in the morning and could carry enough fuel, we decided to try to take the "Bay Tour" before heading to Watsonville.

The Bay Tour is simply flying to the San Francisco Bay where you can fly around Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and other sites in the area. It is more complicated from the pilot's point of view because it consists of entering class Bravo airspace around San Francisco (SFO) airspace and flying in congested airspace with much larger aircraft while you transition to the north over the bay. Once you get to the bay, you're flying under the class B airspace so the controllers let you "resume own navigation", but still keep an eye out for you to help with conflicting traffic.

There was a lot of activity up there while we were there, but I found the controllers extremely helpful and considerate. Since you are in such congested airspace, they need you to follow exactly what you are told and for you to understand exactly what you are told. The controllers are talking unbelievably fast and there is no spare time for inexperience. The only problem I had the controller quickly picked up on and corrected. I thought he told me cleared to enter class Bravo airspace and to remain west of the San Jose airspace, then pick up, but stay west of the 101 Bayshore freeway. The controller confirmed my read back so I heard it properly so I guess I didn't know what he really wanted me to do.

Since I wanted to start descending I turned slightly more westbound to avoid some upcoming terrain, doing so I would remain west of the upcoming San Jose class Charlie airspace. As soon as I turned, the controller questioned what I was doing and he clarified that he wanted me to overfly class Charlie then descend to 3500 ft on my current (before I turned) heading. I guess I'm not sure who got this mixed up. Thinking back, maybe I was still being vectored. While I was talking to the prior (or even the before that) controller, when I asked if I could take the bay tour, he said sure and gave me what I wanted to do. After I told him I wanted to fly up the west side over SFO to the bridge he told me a vector to follow to be in the correct position to pick up the class Bravo transition. I thought that vector was more of a suggestion in it's context and would have long been expired, but if hadn't, then I shouldn't have started my turn. The controller was very nice and we quickly got on the same page and my bay tour went without any other issues.

Back to the actual tour, as we were flying up the peninsula, there were plenty of sights to see including San Jose International, San Francisco International, Stanford, the San-Mateo bridge, the Bay bridge, The Golden Gate bridge, and Alcatraz. As we were flying past SFO, the controller advised my of nearby traffic at my 3 o'clock down low and climbing towards me. It is usually very difficult to find other airplanes when you are flying because they are small, most are white and blend into the sky, and they are usually too far away. Not this guy, here was a jet flying right towards us. He passed behind and below us, but not by much. Soon we passed the majority surface class B airspace and we were free to navigate on our own.

I descended down to 2,500 feet as we headed towards Alcatraz to make sure I maintained 2,000 ft over the area since it is a National Park. As we flew to Alcatraz, we could see sailboats everywhere. As we circled Alcatraz, we also had a great view of fisherman's wharf. Then we flew west and overflew the Golden Gate bridge. Once we passed the bridge, we circled it to the right, then got we started on our way back. I told the controller we needed to transition back through class Bravo on our way back to Watsonville and they let us fly down the coast, which unfortunately was fogged in.

Our trip from the bay down to Watsonville was pretty uneventful. The only interesting thing is that as we were flying over Soquel and we were looking down at the Redwoods, we were wondering if this is where Julie and Pancho lived. We knew it was in this area, but didn't manage to spot their house. Later when we were at their house, I fired up the GPS to mark their location with a waypoint and I noticed that we had actually flown right over their house while we thought we were in the right area.

We grabbed a bite to eat at Zuniga's, the Mexican restaurant with very good food right on the airport as Tom and David (a friend of Tom and Joan's) came out to the airport to pick us up. After lunch we showed of the airplane to Tom and David then headed to Julie and Pancho's house. Once we got there, preparations were already well on the way for the party. We met lots of new people and enjoyed the live music of Terry and Terry out on the back deck overlooking the Redwood forest. It was a great party and I'm really glad we were able to make it up there. Unfortunately Lisa and Matt weren't able to make it, but they're planning on stopping by here next weekend so we'll be able to see them then.

This morning we got up at a relaxed pace and ate breakfast. There was no rush to get out to the airport since they were still reporting fog. Eventually we went out the airport around 1 and pre-flighted the airplane. Everything was good to go and I called flight service. The airport was reporting 900' scattered clouds, but as we watched airplanes taking off, we could see them climb out and turn staying below and clear of the clouds so we decided to head out. There was little traffic and light winds so we took off runway 8 instead of the normal runway 20. We took off and headed towards a corridor through the clouds. As it turns out, it was more of scattered to broken at 300 ft. The corridor through the clouds was plenty big and I was above the layer in no time flat, but I think I ended up below VFR conditions.

I wonder how this works because they leave the actual condition decisions up to the pilot not the automated recording and I had watched airplanes in the pattern not entering the clouds. I thought that this was enough to satisfy me that the airport was VFR, but I was obviously wrong. I wasn't ever worried about safety since I could see the edge of the cloud layer only a quarter mile or less off the end of the runway, but I really don't like to mess around with legalities when it comes to flying.

Flying back was pretty much normal, turbulence over the mountains and a headwind. Michelle found an airport that had some kind of field around it that had a maze carved through it, some day we'll have to drive there and do the maze. After 2 hours on the tach we were home once again.