Day 2: St. John’s Canada to Narsarsuaq, Greenland
This is the leg that always makes me nervous, especially in a single-engine. The winds never really lined up cleanly, even after waiting out the storm that brought Spring Snow to the US Eastern Seaboard and Canada. Sometimes you just gotta go - 884 NM, 3:00:00 roughly ETE.
Vertigo has the most reliable turboprop powerplant ever built - the PT-6A. And it never missed a beat, even 300 NM from the nearest landfall, deep over the Labrador Sea. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was watching the fuel gauge and the wind vectors like a hawk. In the end, I kept a few torque points in reserve, went 10 knots slower on cruise thinking I might need that extra half gallon at the end. And it was looking tight as I passed 5450N, 200 NM off Mary’s Point in Newfoundland, as the wind turned stiffly cross-ways at 30 knots for over 300 NM. Fortunately, it shifted again as I dropped from FL210 down to 7,000 beginning the RNAV descent into RWY 06, and generously gave me a 40 knot tailwind for a while. As it turned out, the low fuel lights came on just as I was pulling into the ramp at BGBW. Heck I even got a rainbow on the approach - it wasn’t even close.
Next stop - Reykjavik Iceland!
