OLD FLYING YARN...

...and a moonlit tropical beach

My bride and I were on the Bahamian island of Inagua years ago where I was working on my multi-engine flight rating.

That night it was just like you might have imagined. The moon was low in the western sky and making undulating sparkles in the slowly pulsating ocean swells. At regular intervals the lighthouse on the point would cast a glow on the rocky, shoreline while the vacant beach beckoned a pair of young lovers.

We chuckled as my bride and I left the lighthouse road and scampered down through the scattered saw grass, then, climbed slowly over the rocks as the nearby waves gently slapped our beach.

We whispered those sweet nothings as we allowed the ambiance to smother our willing senses.

Then--it was just like you might imagine.

Some years later I was flying as the instrument qualified pilot with a local doctor in his Piper Aztec. We were southeast bound in the cool air at 9,000 feet between West Palm Beach, FL and Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

That same lighthouse began to pass under us far below. It was arriving just in time as I checked off another correctly estimated leg of our flight. I said, “Doc, you’ll never guess what I was doing the last time I saw that lighthouse.”

As he looked at me curiously I felt a sharp thump through the bottom of my seat as my bride, who was sitting behind me on this flight, silently announced her preference for my discretion.

I obliged by a smooth change of subject.

When I looked back I was rewarded with a chaste wink.