Cherokee Seven-Three-Zero-One-Juliet turning base, Runway 2, Tangier Island,” I called. Just then I spotted a Cirrus on a long final to Runway 2 at Tangier Island Airport (TGI) in Virginia. Not wanting to swap paint with the faster airplane, I made a 360-degree turn and lined up behind it.
The Cirrus and my Piper Cherokee were among the final airplanes to touch down at Tangier Island on a brilliant Saturday morning in December 2015. Fifty-two airplanes had launched earlier from Stevensville-Bay Bridge Airport (W29) in Maryland. All of us were on a mission: to carry bags of holly to tiny Tangier Island. Located in the lower Eastern Shore, the island is home to about 700 people, and it is accessible only by boat or airplane. No evergreens grow on the island.
These past 12 months, I have felt a need to use my airplane for more than burning holes in the sky. Two or three trips around the pattern doesn’t cut it—particularly on a Saturday morning when my airport more closely resembles a beehive and the tower controller’s transmissions are tinged with a hint of impatience. Better to get out of the pattern and leave it to the students. So I look for reasons to fly. I plan breakfast and lunch runs. I work on instrument currency with my A&P/CFII, Dean Durbin. I take the occasional Pilots ’n Paws transport. The Tangier Island Holly Run was a perfect mission to put me in a holiday frame of mind.
Tangier Island is a favorite summertime crab cake destination, but this was the first time that I had managed to fly the run. This unique event occurs annually, weather permitting. It began in 1968, when Ed Nabb flew holly in his Ercoupe to bring some seasonal joy to the islanders. His son, Ed Nabb Jr., is one of many pilots who carry on the tradition.
Santa, aka Rick Lindstrom, walked into the breakfast safety briefing, looking—well, jolly. His chariot (Rudolph One) was a Van’s RV–10 flown by Mitch Lock. Santa brought presents and candy canes for the children on the island; pilots donated supplies for the island’s schoolhouse.
The airplanes departed nontowered W29 in a carefully choreographed dance. Pilots had been instructed to park on W29’s north ramp if their airplanes cruised 100 mph or faster. Slower airplanes and special chariots (such as Santa’s RV–10 and airplanes carrying news media) were parked on the south ramp, and they were told to launch first.
Fifty-two airplanes is a lot of airplanes to me. I waited at my spot on the north ramp until almost everyone else had started their engines, taxied out, and departed to the south. Then it was my turn.
Tracing a route along the Eastern Shore that kept me mostly over land until Crisfield, Maryland, I turned southwest to fly the remaining 14 nautical miles over the Chesapeake Bay. I tuned in Tangier’s common traffic advisory frequency. There still seemed to be at least five or six airplanes converging on Tangier Island’s 2,400-foot runway, and two poor souls in Beech Bonanzas waiting on the ground to get out.
By the time I reached the pattern at TGI, things had calmed down. Volunteers marshalled me to a parking spot on the small ramp, skillfully getting everyone jig-sawed into place. After shutting down and exchanging a few pleasantries with the Cirrus pilot, I crossed the ramp to add my holly to a small mountain of bags that would be loaded onto a trailer and delivered by golf cart. On an island that’s about one square mile, golf carts and shoe leather are the primary modes of transportation.
Once at Tangier, some of the group headed to lunch, while others attended a brief service in the island’s only house of worship. Rev. John Flood delivered a Christmas message and closed with a special prayer for pilots: “Lord of the tempered wind, control their minds with instinct fit. Uphold them with your saving grace. Oh, God, protect all those who fly, through lovely waves beneath the sky.”
On my return leg to Maryland, I scanned the sky for other airplanes and thought of the pilot’s prayer and my own: that many more such memorable missions will fill my logbook in the years to come.
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