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Blue Angels welcome us to Beaufort!

"Money is not the only thing one has to spend; the other thing is life. The difference is that you never know how much is in the bank, or what your balance is. Your life is your inheritance. As soon as you realize this, you start trying to spend your life wisely." - From "Advice to the Sealorn" by Herb Payson
Having heard the commercials on the radio during our trip up, we were excited to arrive in Beaufort, SC in time for the weekend airshow. This event marked the first return to Beaufort for the elite Blue Angels since the tragic 2007 show in which Lt. Commander Kevin Davis was killed after apparently blacking out during a high-G maneuver. His plane crashed into a residential area and several people were injured, but only Davis perished. The near passes of Friday's practice session left us excited for the Saturday and Sunday shows. While the show was mostly rained out on Sunday, the weather cooperated on Saturday for a stunning aerial display. From several miles away on our boat at the Downtown Marina we caught glimpses of the C-130 "Fat Albert" and bits of the stunt planes as they shot skyward with their glimmering contrails and thunderous roar. Undoubtedly, the star of the show came out around 3 pm as the Blue Angels began their airborne acrobatics. Since the FA-18's travel so fast, they cover a lot more ground during the show than most of the other planes, and as luck would have it one of the paths they were using around the area was right over top of Felix and the marina. There was a fair bit of cloud cover so we were often hearing the planes and staring up in the sky saying "Where are they?....There! There they are!!", as they came barreling in over us. Photography was a little tough because they were coming in so low and fast, I ended up getting a lot of shots of blank sky, and one really cool close up of the back half of all 6 planes in formation :-( Still, some came out ok and you can click on the images for larger viewing.




It was near the end of the show that we were really surprised, when we looked skyward and saw the most incredible sight.........




Comments

  1. runnermanMay 21, 2009 at 2:12 PM

    gotta love that photoshop!! I've been enjoying following your progress,will see you when you get up here. Brittany is running a 1 mile sprint race with me on monday. She probably will smoke me!!I'll let you know the results, Jack says to say hi to chief.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 21, 2009 at 4:15 PM

    Those blue angel pilots are so nice!

    ReplyDelete

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