There's a first time for everything

The old saying "There's a first time for everything" rang true a couple weeks back as I did my first missed approach in actual IMC where I had absolutely no ground references in sight during the entire final approach segment.

I'd flown to Haward, CA (KHWD) on a fairly benign IMC day. The trip down was more IMC than VMC. Some in/out of the clouds but mostly just brief glimpses of the ground, no horizon though. When I pickup the weather at Hayward, they're calling it 1700 overcast and 2 mile visibility in mist. Approx. 25 miles from Hayward we pop out of the clouds and start getting vectored all over the place as they fit our spam can into the arrival flow. We do a bizarre sequence of 180 and 90 degree turns for 20 minutes in and out of clouds before getting vectored to the final approach course and a descent. Back in the goo, it's getting bumpier and the approach turns out to be one of the more challenging ones I've done. It's a localizer approach with a 440 ft MDA and 1 mile vis. I get the approach clearance somewhere around 9-10 miles out and it's bumpy enough that keeping the localizer centered and a 500 fpm descent rate is pretty tough. The missed approach point is .9 DME from the localizer and as I watch the DME count down, we're still in a big white cotton ball. I'm thinking "ok, where did they hide the airport?" I start thinking seriously about executing the missed approach as we hit 1.5 miles and we're at approx. 1200 ft (yes, I know, higher than I should have been). As the DME clicks down to 1.1 with absolutely no hint of ground/airport/etc. (anything but cloud) in sight, it's time to go missed. Everything on the throttle quadrant goes full forward, positive rate of climb, gear up, flaps up, inform tower that we're going missed, and we get a left turn heading two four zero, and a climb to 2000 ft. At this point, I'm thinking all I want to do is get into VMC conditions and sort things out. I get handed back to Norcal approach and hear the expected "Say intentions" after I check in with them. I ask for a minute to sort things out and they comply with a vector out over the SF bay (not that I could have seen anything that resembled water below us). By this time, I'm ready to go land somewhere, decompress, eat, and reschedule my Hayward appointment so I request vectors to our alternate, Livermore.

As we're headed to Livermore, the controller informs another pilot trying to get to Hayward that the conditions are now 200 ft. overcast. Gee, no wonder we couldn't see anything...the weather had gone in the toilet in the 30-40 minute time frame from the ATIS observation to when we were on the approach. Not uncommon this time of year in that part of the bay. Still, a good reminder of how quickly things can (and do) change.

By the end of the day, I managed two instrument approaches in actual conditions, added another 1.6 to the actual IMC column of the logbook, received my first speed restriction on an approach (don not exceed 110 kts on the Livermore approach), and flown my first missed approach because I couldn't see the airport (and wasn't under the hood :-) ).