To Watsonville and Back

We flew from Seattle down to Watsonville this weekend to visit my wife's mother for her 86th birthday.
I didn't take any photos but have included one above from when N46ME was being created at the Piper factory in Vero Beach.
The flight down was as normal as could be. Headwinds almost the entire way and in VFR conditions except leaving BFI and the last little bit for the approach into KWVI. In the clouds at about 4,000 feet and broke out on the LOC RWY 2 approach at about 1,200 feet MSL (about 1,000 feel AGL). Landed straight in on RWY 2 even though the small amount of local VFR traffic doing landing practice was using RWY 20. Thanks for the very nice folks there for extending their downwinds slightly and letting me land the wrong way. I am typically doing between 100 and 120 knots on final so it was very quick for me to land, clear the runway and get out of everyone's way so they could go about their circuits and bumps.
Interestingly, on the approach I had to slow down a bit because there was a Piper Comanche also on the approach ahead of me and he had to land and cancel on the ground before I could be cleared for the approach. It turns out that it was my good friend Joe Shelton returning from a morning soccer outing with his kids. He is based at KWVI and so far the last three times I have flown in there, he was also just arriving or just leaving.
The trip back was also routine. There had been 500 foot overcast all morning but by the time we left at 1:00 PM it had cleared to the coast. Nor Cal approach was busy so I decided to leave VFR and pick up my clearance to BFI in the air. All went smoothly and in the 2 hours and 59 minutes in flight the closest we came to being in a cloud was during vectors to the ILS at Boeing Field where we just skimmed over the top of a cloud. One gets a real sense of the speed one is flying at when that happens.
Finally, during the arrival we picked up traffic on our IHAS system at our altitude (FL260) about 5 miles ahead of us. Our distance apart never changed until we started our descent. He was going to PAE (Paine Field in Everett where the 747, 767, et al are made). After we landing I looked it up and it was a Pilatus PC-12 based at PAE. Other folks have told me that pretty much the PC-12 and the Meridian cruise at the same speed and the PC-12 only pulls ahead in the descent since it has a much higher Vmo speed than the Meridian. Of course the Meridian climbs faster so in a long flight it all works out to be the same. The big difference is that the PC-12 is much roomier and has quite a bit better range (although 3 to 3.5 hours is about my limit for sitting). Oh yes, that and the PC-12 flies like a truck. Word is that they have improved the handling with the 2006 model. The Meridian is a delight to fly by hand whereas the PC-12 is just a lot of work and not at all pleasant to fly by hand.