Wednesday, 28 Feb: Today shall be known as “drone day”, given the whole day revolved around flying the drone. Take-1, take-2, take-3 …..
After breakfast we decide today we will be brave enough to fly the drone out to sea over Cloudy Bay. The ultimate goal is to take off and land on Cloudy Bay while we are sailing. But similar to the NASA Apollo mission to land on the moon, we are getting there in small ground breaking steps!
On land we get prepared as the count-down to lift-off starts. Oana takes the tools and various parts out of the rucksack and lays out the launch-pad, a beach towel on the ground. Meanwhile Glen prepares the drone for takeoff. After it is lifted off the ground, Glen flies it out towards Cloudy Bay, looking only at the screen of Oana’s iPhone where the on-board camera transmits to.
As the screen is so small it’s hard to see which boat is actually CB. At last he finds it and hovers above the mast… then, disaster! A WhatsApp message from Oana’s cousin, Monica, appears on the iPhone screen. Glen does the usual, to get such a notification off the screen, but this also closes the App that links to the drone. We are blind and the drone is sooo far away that we can barely see it above Cloudy Bay, about 400m away. We press the “come home” button, but the drone just stays where it is.
With heart rate hitting a record high, Glen eventually works out which way the drone is pointing and manages to fly it back to the beach and land it back on the towel. Phew! Now we know why phones are turned off when flying! We’ll be reporting Monica to the air traffic control authorities!
Flight 2 commenced, with the phone aptly set on “flight mode” to stop any more family interference :). This flight we manage to fly all around Cloudy Bay. The images are a bit fuzzy on the iPhone but we are sure will be OK once downloaded. Back on Cloudy Bay we excitedly put the video files onto the PC ….. but to our horror both videos are totally out of focus. No wonder it was hard to see on the iPhone screen. It seems the camera focused on the towel at take off and remained fixed on this short distance focus for the whole flight! Damn!
Not to be put off so easily, we charge the batteries and set off to the beach with the drone again. This time Glen has worked out how to use the iPad as the screen …. much bigger than the iPhone. The flight goes well. Glen is getting the hang of making smooth flight and camera movements. Back at Cloudy Bay we are in awe of the result. The videos are breath taking. So stable and so clear. What an incredible piece of engineering this DJI Mavic is.
It’s now mid afternoon so we up-anchor and set off to Palm Island, just a mile away. Palm island is owned 100% as a luxury resort. As we approach, the sea is again a deep turquoise blue. Behind the white sand beach are hotel beach houses nesting among palm trees and just a few people sunbathing. It looks like a very classy resort.
Usually, when we anchor, we have to consider the possibility of the wind swinging. But here, with the very constant trade winds, we drop anchor in sand immediately downwind of the reef, that protects us from the Atlantic swell. The water is so crystal clear, we can see the anchor all the way to the bottom. We sit and have lunch admiring our free-view while all those poor working people on the resort have to pay for theirs. But Oana reminds Glen that Cloudy Bay probably costs more to run than the whole resort here!
While lunching, a local boat comes to us and sells us fresh red-snapper. 40EC for 2 fish. He skillfully descales and guts them with a very sharp knife as his small boat rocks in the waves. Those will be BBQ tomorrow. Red snapper is yummy. A post lunch swim, a quick sunbath, then it’s time to dress up and go ashore. Yes folks, we do still dress for the occasion – and we need to blend in with this 5-star resort!
We arrive to the resort jetty, which certainly doesn’t look 5-star, but it does OK for tying the dinghy to. We walk into the resort passing several strange signs saying “no entry”, “private” or “ hotel guests only”. But such signs don’t apply to Sansom’s 🙂 There are very few people around, and most look like rich middle aged or retired Americans.
At the end of the resort, once we are level with Cloudy Bay, we take out the drone again. The sun is setting and this beach is quite something, so we are determined to film it from the air. The flight goes really well, Glen is mastering the control. He even flies it completely out of sight all the way to the end of the beach around the other side of the island. Can’t wait to see this footage.
On our way to find the cocktail bar we take a few photos among the palms and in hammocks. Oana demonstrates how you can be posing in a hammock one second, and the next second be flat on your back in the sand, under said hammock! A brilliant piece of gymnastics 🙂 Once we’d brushed the sand out of her dress it was off to watch the sunset with a cocktail.
At the bar we meet a younger couple (in their 50s!) staying at the resort. The cocktails are US$10 each. Not as high as we expected for such a resort. But when we get the bill and they have added tax and service charge it’s more what we feared! Anyhow, it’s a treat to watch the sunset in such a nice place.
We get back to Cloudy Bay in bright moonlight and hurry to the PC to download the drone video. But horror again…. there is only 1 short file and nothing else recorded. Looks like the video was already running and Glen turned it off when he thought he was turning it on. What a numpty. Well, there will be lots of other opportunities.
Back on Union island, the phone signal had been rubbish. But here on Palm island it is excellent. And as it’s the last day of the month and we still have several gigabytes of data left to use, we spend the evening uploading video and photos to YouTube and Facebook. Then relax a little in the cockpit with the moonlight so bright that the sea around us is a lovely blue, almost like daylight.