See this picture? It was taken with our friend’s drone. Thanks Shane and Tanya.
I love drone shots. They’re so gorgeous, especially when the subject is the tropics. Like here, at Boysie Cay in the Exumas. You truly capture the color of the water, the contrast of the sand, and you even get a birdseye view of those blow holes everyone talks about.
So why don’t we have any drone shots of our own? My company gave us a fabulous DJI Phantom for my retirement. The thing is awesome! It takes great shots, is easy to use, and even has catching handles. But we’re scared to death to fly it while we’re sailing. Who wants to risk crashing it into the ocean or the rocks? Maybe we’re better off to just look at it sitting in the utility room.
Paul and Sheryl Shard, a pair of sailing rock stars, flew one of their drones from their boat while sailing one afternoon. After two miles, Paul got the “low battery” alarm. And what is a drone programmed to do when the battery gets low? It goes “home”. But “home” is two miles away in the water!
Paul, a very technically savvy individual, was able to retrieve the drone. No harm done. Me? I don’t know.
I recently bought an EXO drone. They’re inexpensive and have a great reputation. We were excited to fly it from here. And since it didn’t cost an arm and a leg, we wouldn’t be completely heartbroken if it crashed.
We took it out of the package and tried like hell to get it to pair to one of our phones. In the end, they replaced it under warranty. We just go it back, so stay tuned.
March 2022