Block Island Flight

Arrived at Hanscom at 0700 and pre-flighted the 172SP-G1000 for a flight to Block Island, off of the RI coast. Accompanying me was Mike Morris, another pilot who had never flown in a glass cockpit before. The weather was iffy, Block Island (KBID) was showing visibility and ceilings below IFR approach minimums. Morning coastal fog is common here but at 0700, it seemed to be getting worse rather than better. However, all of the inland airports were reporting great VFR conditions so we decided to head down, and if the island was fogged in, we'd divert to New Bedford or Plymouth which were looking good. It was great having Mike help run down the checklists and before long we received an "as filed" IFR clearance, completed our runup and were off. SEY, the Block Island VOR is one of the fixes on the Hanscom Six departure procedure so it was no surprise that once we contacted Boston Approach, we were cleared direct to SEY at 4,000 feet.

The routing put us right over Providence and Greene Airport with great views of Providence Bay, Fall River and New Bedford. You could see the ground fog burning off as we headed south and received clearance for the GPS 28 approach into KBID. I entered the procedure into the autopilot and it found the IAF with no problem and executed the turn inbound to the island. About 5 miles from the FAF, I slowed down and dropped 10 degress flaps and the autopilot started moving the pitch trim up quickly. A pitch trim failure annunciator lit so I disconnected the autopilot and hand flew the rest of the approach.

The ramp was pretty empty since a lot of planes probably were waiting for the fog to clear before departure so we parked and headed over to Bethany's Diner, right in the terminal building. The ramp manager told us he would waive the landing fee if we grabbed breakfast on the airport so we did. It was very crowded and we grabbed the last two seats. The food was great and cheap so after filling up on caffeine and cholesterol, we decided to walk into town which was perhaps a mile or two from the airport, and all downhill.

After passing through the airport gate, we turned left and passed some very pretty rows of hydrangeas that were in front of the Old Town Inn. On both side of the road are pretty farms and cape style houses with hydrangeas, roses and day lillies everywhere. Although there are no signs to point out town, you just keep following the roads down hill and eventually you will wind up on Ocean Avenue hading toward Dodge Street and Spring Street, the main thoroughfare near the ferry landing.

We turned the corner onto Spring Street and were immediately greeted by a view of the harbor. It was full of boats of most shapes and sizes. Both the high speed and conventional ferries had just arrived from Port Judith were discharging passengers. The boats were packed like sardine cans and as we watch the stream of passengers emerging, I was happy we had the relative "spaciousness" of our Skyhawk for the flight down.

Across Spring Street from the docks was the National Hotel. Originally built in 1888, this prominent hotel with wraparound porch is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The porch was filled with breakfasters as they fueled up before the days' exploration of beaches and shops.

And shops there were, aplenty! Spring street was a mini-metropolis of shops, restaurants, art galleries and the like. It reminded me a little of walking through downtown Chatham, on Cape Cod. The street here was pretty busy with cabs picking up ferry passengers, trucks making their food pickups from the docks and a steady stream of bicycles and mopeds, both of which can be rented right there on Spring Street. We walked down as far as High Street and the Harbor Baptist Church, where the traffic moves around a rotary with a marble statue conspicuously in its center.

Named for the biblical Rebekah-at-the-well, B.I.’s “Rebecca” stands proudly at the intersection of four Old Harbor roads. She was erected in 1896 by the local Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, which hoped to curb the consumption of alcohol on Block Island. Ironically, restoration experts have concluded that Rebecca is in fact Hebe, cupbearer to the Gods, which may explain why consumption of alcohol is in such prevelance on BI. The statue was recast in 2001.

After a lemonade break and a trip to one of the shops to pick up t-shirts for the kids, we headed back to the docks for a cab ride back to the airport. After obtaining a weather briefing and clearance, we were rolling down the runway. I climbed at Vx due to a low hill that rises from the departure end of the runway and turned to track direct to the Norwich VOR, our first fix. After making landfall over Westerly airport, ATC gave us a northward radar vector to practically overfly the Connecticut-Rhode Island border west of Providence. As instructed, we intercepted V16 and tracked northeast to WOON intersection and received radar vectors back to Bedford where the wind had picked up. Before shooting the ILS for runway 29, we received radar vectors that send us out as far as Lawrence before we were turned back inbound. I caught a gust on landing and came down harder than I liked which marked perhaps the only glitch to a near perfect flight.