Jimmy Dreams.......of flying

Jimmy Buffett has been flying for over fifteen years now. His love of flying first blossomed when he was in college. A friend of his at the University of Southern Mississippi was a pilot and introduced him to flying. Jimmy had a flight lesson here or there but it didn't amount to much in the early days. Money was tight and flying is certainly not cheap. As a notable sign I once saw in an airport said, "If God had intended man to fly, he would've given him more money." However, that flying bug stayed with Jimmy. He set the goal of having his license by his 40th birthday. So as more success brought more money, Jimmy was able to resume his flying dream. He purchased a Lake Renegade amphibian and was instructed to his private pilot certification with single engine land and sea ratings just a year shy of his 40th birthday. Jimmy now owns several planes including the Hemisphere Dancer, a restored Grumman Albatross, which was sometimes flown over concert venues. However, the Albatross was recently retired and put on display at Margaritaville in Orlando. A Dassault Falcon 900c zips Jimmy around for business. Not forgetting pleasure, a Cessna Caravan amphibian lets Jimmy island hop while a Stearman biplane gives him a sense of nostalgia. There have also been a few close calls in Jimmy's flying career. In 1994, Jimmy was performing a water takeoff in his Grumman Widgeon when he encountered a swell in Nantucket and was unable to maintain control. The aircraft nosed over and sank. Read the accident report. Thanks to Naval survival training (required for a flight in an F-14 that Jimmy took), Jimmy swam out relatively uninjured. In 1996, shortly after landing the Hemisphere Dancer on the water outside of Negril, Jamaican authorities shot at the airplane mistaking it for a drugrunning seaplane. This incident inspired Jimmy to write the song Jamaica Mistaica for the Banana Wind album.