Day 3: Santa Maria to Honolulu

Sunday dawned foggy and overcast in Santa Maria, our jumping-off airport. Although we were completely capable of instrument flight, we didn’t want to take off at this unusually heavy weight (30% over the normal takeoff weight) without the ability to return quickly to the airport under visual conditions. Finally by around 9:30 a.m. we had a high enough cloud ceiling to take off. We got our clearance from Air Traffic Control, and climbed through the thin overcast. The cloud deck covered the Pacific for the first several hundred miles, but by mid day it had cleared beautifully. The calm Pacific was now completely visible below.

I’ll include a variety of screen shots from the G1000 as this diary progresses. The two screens are the Primary Flight Display (PFD) and the Multifunction Display (MFD). The PFD contains all the normal flight instrument indications superimposed over a full-width horizon, complete with “Synthetic Vision,” which gives a pilot’s–eye view of the topography ahead, all taken from the worldwide terrain database. Even when in the clouds, the pilot has a synthetic view of the terrain and obstacle features ahead.

The MFD gives a “look-down” view, much like a map, also with terrain coloring. The MFD also shares screen space with the engine and aircraft systems indications.

As we turned west, the Garmin G1000 showed nothing but blue ahead of us.

The Santa Maria to Honolulu leg was the longest of the entire trip, and we needed tailwinds to be able to do it with the limited fuel we had on board. As we progressed across the route, we kept a keen eye on the wind components that the G1000 continuously computed for us. “T” for tailwind, and “X” for crosswind. Every knot of tailwind spread over 13 hours meant significant savings of time and fuel.

If it began looking like we wouldn’t have the fuel to make Honolulu, we had an alternate on the nearer island of Maui. But Honolulu was our first choice, and we made it there with two hours’ reserve an hour after sunset.