AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2023 - 67

Humiliating criticism
Nevis was an economic battleground in the
eighteenth century as the British, French,
Danish, and Dutch fought for advantage in the
Caribbean and pirates and privateers piled on
as free agents.
Then as now, it was a place of surpassing
The most intimidating part of this trip, for me,
wasn't flying long distances over water.
It was the border crossings.
natural beauty.
Sugar drove the economy then, and the climate
in Nevis was ideal for growing it. Hamilton
was just a young boy in the late 1750s when he
lived in Nevis with his parents and an older
brother. But his experiences here-and those
that followed in neighboring St. Kitts and St.
Croix-shaped him and later, young America.
Fierce opposition to slavery (even though his
family owned slaves), an activist central government,
a diversified economy backed by a
disciplined monetary policy, and free trade were
policies that took root in his formative years.
So did his view that government was meant to
keep order and counter the negative aspects of
human nature he regarded as predominant.
Hamilton witnessed the cruelty of the African
slave trade up close since Charlestown, his Nevis
home, was at the center of it. Slaves who resisted
or tried to escape were subject to murder, torture,
amputation, and disfigurement. Europeans
were pressed into indentured servitude on the
island with little chance for advancement.
An Anglican minister posted to Nevis in the
eighteenth century described new British arrivals-many
of whom had been convicted of petty
crimes at home-as being " not bad enough for
the gallows and yet too bad to live among their
virtuous countrymen at home. "
Hamilton was unlikely to have received any
formal education in the West Indies because
of his illegitimate birth, and he was thought
to have been tutored by a Jewish woman who
taught him, among other things, to recite the
Ten Commandments in Hebrew. It was a skill
Hamilton later claimed to have mastered,
according to a son, when " so small he was
placed standing beside her on a table. "
Hamilton went to work at age nine on the
Danish island of St. Croix as a clerk for a New
York-based trading company, and there he saw
the value of a stable currency and the dangers of
foreign entanglements. European powers were
maneuvering for advantage in the West Indies,
and any small nation that pinned its hopes on a
larger one was likely to be done in eventually by
bad luck or treachery.
I dreaded the customs bureaucracy involved in flying up and down
an archipelago where just about every island we'd visit was its own
country. If I had had unlimited time, perhaps taking on the myriad
regulations would have been an interesting puzzle-but we were
trying to keep a tight schedule and visit as many airports as possible
to update the AOPA Pilot Guide to the Caribbean with new
information, photos, and video.
Fear of spending hours each day stuck in bureaucratic limbo
while falling behind schedule had me tossing and turning in the
nights leading up to our departure.
Fortunately, I called Air Journey, a Florida firm that specializes
in international flying trips, and signed up for their " concierge "
service. Air Journey's Guillaume Fabry, better known to
U.S. customers simply as " G, " is a veteran pilot from France
with vast international experience-and he'd act as a remote
flight dispatcher.
Fabry filed flight plans, provided preflight briefings, and
coordinated customs clearance-all through an Air Journey
smartphone app of his own design. I wasn't exactly sure how
it would all work before the trip, but in practice his system performed
beautifully. Even in places where cellphone service was
spotty, I could always find a Wi-Fi connection, and that was
enough to download Fabry's daily update.
He filed mostly D-VFR flight plans through ForeFlight that I could
edit and activate on my iPhone. Each evening, he'd send a briefing
for the next day's flights that included radio frequencies, suggested
routes and altitudes, approach plates, airport photos, and customs
clearance information. At most locations, he also contacted
a handler-a local specialist who could get us through sometimes
bewildering customs procedures without drama or delay.
Reading Fabry's succinct but thorough briefings via the Air
Journey app became a nightly ritual that allowed me to focus on
the flying portions of each leg instead of the bureaucracy. This
trip would have been impossible to complete on schedule-and
it would have been far more stressful-without the expert insights
and timely guidance provided by Air Journey.
Merci, G. -DH
AOPA PILOT / March 2023
67
AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2023

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