I do not believe in God but, as I sat there in the damaged capsule, hopelessly vulnerable to the slightest shift in weather or mechanical fault, I could not believe my eyes. It was as if a spirit had entered the capsule and was helping us along. As I watched the instruments and calculated our groundspeed, it became clear that we were beginning to fly very fast, close to the necessary 170 miles an hour. Before we had dropped the fuel tanks we had been flying at about 80 miles an hour, which had been very good progress. This was a miracle.
I slapped myself across the face to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, but each fifteen minutes the speeds grew faster: 160 miles an hour, 180, 200, and even 240. This was astounding. I tried not to imagine the size of the balloon above me: I just looked at the dials and pretended that I was driving some kind of weightless car which I had to keep within a ribbon of road. Whenever we dropped speed, I assumed that we had dropped out of the inner core of the jet stream and so I burnt a little gas – as little as possible – and generally we picked up speed again.
Even at this amazing speed, it still takes an hour to fly 200 miles and we had 6,000 of them to fly. I tried not to be daunted by the length of the journey ahead, but concentrated on each fifteen-minute section. I was desperately trying not to fall asleep. My head kept dropping forward and I pinched myself to keep awake. I suddenly saw an eerie light on the glass dome above us. I looked up and marvelled at it: it was white and orange and flickering. Then I yelled: it was fire. I squinted at it and realised that burning white lumps of propane were tumbling all around the glass dome, just missing it.
‘Per!’ I yelled. ‘We’re on fire.’
Per lurched awake and looked up. He has incredibly quick reactions, and in spite of his exhaustion it took him a split second to decide what to do:
‘Take her up,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get up to 40,000 feet where there’s no oxygen. Then the fire’ll go out.’
I fired the burners and the balloon began to rise. It seemed to rise too slowly, and the lumps of propane continued to drop all around the glass dome. With the outside temperature at minus 70 degrees and the heat of the fireballs, it would take only one hitting the glass to explode it.
We rose through 36,000 feet, 38,000 feet, and put on our oxygen masks. They were scant comfort. If the glass dome cracked or melted, we would die within seconds from loss of air pressure. We were caught in a catch-22: the lack of oxygen at 40,000 feet would snuff out the flames on the glass dome but it could also snuff out the burners. If the burners went out before the propane fireballs, we’d drift back down to 36,000 feet before we could restart the burners and the propane fire would continue to threaten the glass.
We rose to 43,000 feet. At last the burners spluttered and the fire was snuffed out. Per opened the vent at the top of the balloon and we headed back down. As well as risking the capsule exploding at 43,000 feet, we had wasted precious fuel.
We flew on without radio communication for another hour. I kept myself going by talking into the video camera. I imagined that I was talking to Joan, Holly and Sam, and kept chatting away, telling them how much I loved them and that we were coming back to land in America. The balloon stayed at 29,000 feet, and continued to sweep northeastward towards the West Coast of America. We were in a tiny metal capsule swinging around in the stratosphere above a dark ocean. I was too frightened to eat anything other than apples and some chocolate. I wrote in my logbook:
Flown seventeen hours and four minutes. Feels like a lifetime. Coming near the dateline. When we cross the dateline we beat our world hot-air-ballooning record. However, right now we are about as far away from help as anyone could ever be, sitting in a tilting capsule with half our fuel gone, terrified that if we move the rest will fall off. Not sure whether war has broken out because we have lost all communication with the outside world. Unlikely to reach the coast. But spirits up and the speed we’re going is amazing.
As our hours out of contact with San José continued, I wrote, ‘Things look pretty desperate. I’m not certain at this moment that we’ll get home.’
Then, just as abruptly as we had lost contact, we made it. I heard voices on the radio. By this time radio contact had been down for six hours and ten minutes. Mike had thought he’d lost us as two of the ships he had steaming towards us had reported sighting wreckage.
‘Mike, is that you?’
‘Richard! Where are you?’
‘Sitting in a tin can over the Pacific.’
We nearly wept with relief.
‘We thought that you must have ditched. God, we practically mobilised the airforce and the navy.’
‘We’re OK,’ I lied. ‘We’ve had a fire up on the capsule from propane but it’s gone out.’
I gave them our position.
‘Any other problems, apart from not having enough fuel to go home?’ Mike wanted to know.
‘No. We’re still tilting. We’re certainly not going to fire off any more fuel tanks.’
‘War’s broken out in the Gulf,’ a girl’s voice said. It was Penni, who was in the control room with them. ‘The Americans are bombing Baghdad.’
I thought of the soldiers I had met at Baghdad airport. The outbreak of the Gulf War meant that, if we did have to ditch, quite rightly we would be the last priority for anyone.
‘Thank God we’ve got hold of you,’ Bob Rice said. ‘I’ve worked out your route. You need to come down immediately. Your current jet stream will soon start bending back towards Japan. You’ll be marooned over the Pacific. If you come down from 30,000 feet to 18,000 feet you might get the jet that’s heading north. It’s sweeping up towards the Arctic but at least it’s land.’
‘Christ!’ Mike swore. ‘Another half an hour and you’d have been swinging back away from us.’
We cut off the burners and began to descend. After five hours Bob told us to rise again. We went back up to 30,000 feet and sure enough found ourselves heading northwest. We now flew steadily hour after hour. We stayed in the jet stream and kept the fuel we burnt to a minimum. We were still over the Pacific, flying at 200 miles an hour in a lopsided capsule, and we were exhausted, but now we had radio contact I felt that anything was possible. And the miracle continued. Our speeds were extraordinary: 210 miles an hour, 220, 200. We were just beating the average 180 miles an hour we needed. Someone was being very kind to us.
The good news was that we were now heading steadily towards the Canadian coastline. The fuel was lasting well; our speeds kept up; and Per and I began to believe that we might even make land. I was still too frightened to doze off since the only few seconds I had fallen asleep I had terrifying nightmares of skulls and death. We were both exhausted, dehydrated and fighting to keep our concentration.
‘You’re heading way north,’ Mike Kendrick told us. ‘The rescue team is chasing you to try to get to where you’re going to land. They’re in a Learjet. Will’s there, and so are your parents.’
After 36 hours of flying, we finally crossed the coast of northern Canada. It was too dark to see, but we felt safer. Even though we were now heading for the Rockies, one of the most inhospitable mountain ranges you could find, at least it was land. We hugged each other and shared a chocolate bar. It was an incredible feeling. As we started flying over the Rockies, we made radio contact with the local ground control, Watson Lake Flight Service.
‘Put your rescue beacon on,’ they advised. ‘You’re heading into a blizzard. There’s zero visibility and a wind of 35 knots. The Learjet has turned back to shelter at Yellowknife.’
Our exhilaration turned to despair. We put on the rescue beacon, and from then on every five seconds there was an ear-splitting beep. We had been expecting to land in California with an escort of helicopters but we had missed Los Angeles by 3,000 miles and were heading into an Arctic blizzard. We knew we could land safely and then die, just as easily as Fumio had done. Hot-air balloons are fragile things: they are not designed to be flown in blizzards. A bad blizzard could tear up the balloon and we could drop out of th
e sky. It was just before dawn.
We knew we had to land soon after dawn. If we left it for another two or three hours the sun would heat up the balloon’s envelope and we would continue to fly past Greenland, deeper into the Arctic and out of reach of any rescue team.
One of my allotted jobs was to prepare the balloon for landing. When we were at 750 feet, I opened the hatch. Cold air and snow rushed in. I climbed out on to the top of the capsule. We were in the middle of a snowstorm, and whirling along at around 80 miles an hour. It was difficult to keep my balance as we were still hanging at an angle and the top of the metal capsule was frozen. I held on to the steel hawsers and leant across to remove the safety pins which are there to prevent the bolts from firing if we hit a lightning storm. I pulled them out and threw them into the snowstorm. I crouched there for a minute and watched the snow whirl around me.
The only light was the huge orange flame above me. Snowflakes were spinning around me and falling into the flame, where they vanished. One of the most magical things about ballooning is that you do not hear the wind because you are travelling at the same speed as it is. You can be flying at 150 miles an hour and put tissue paper on the capsule which – in theory – shouldn’t blow off. And so, although we were in the middle of a snowstorm, it was very quiet. I was mesmerised by the sight of the snowflakes vanishing into the flames. Then I peered around and began to see the ground below us. I realised that one of the reasons why it was so dark was that we were flying over a thick pine forest. I shouted down to Per:
‘Don’t get too low. It’s all forest. We’ll never get out of there.’
I stayed on the top of the capsule and shouted down what I could see.
‘There’s a space ahead. Can you see it?’
‘Prepare for landing,’ Per shouted, and shut off the burner.
I climbed back into the capsule and we headed down. Our groundspeed was around 40 miles an hour when we crashed to earth with a hell of a bang. We went skidding across the ground before Per managed to fire the explosive bolts. Mercifully, this time they worked and the capsule ground to a halt as the envelope flew off without us. We were strapped in, but in a trice we were struggling to get out. Both of us thought the capsule might blow up with the last of the propane fuel.
We wrenched open the hatch and clambered outside. We hugged each other and danced a little jig in the snow. The silver balloon envelope had draped itself across the pine trees and was being shredded by the wind. Then we realised two things: the capsule wasn’t going to blow up, and it was minus 60 degrees outside. Unless we got back inside, we’d get frostbite. We crawled inside the capsule and I made radio contact with Watson Lake Flight Service.
‘We’ve done it. We’ve arrived. We’re all in one piece.’
‘Where are you?’
‘We’ve landed on a lake surrounded by trees.’
‘It’s a frozen lake,’ came the laconic Canadian voice. ‘It’s quite safe. The only trouble is that there are about 800,000 lakes in your vicinity and they’ve all got plenty of trees.’
We had to wait in our capsule for another eight hours. Per had frostbite in one of his feet, and I had frostbite in a finger. We huddled together, half-asleep, eating our supplies, desperate for warmth as the snow and wind howled around our metal capsule. We had landed over 300 miles from the nearest habitation, 150 miles from the nearest road, in an area of wilderness about 200 times the size of Britain.
‘We’ve flown for 6,761 miles,’ Per said with weary triumph. ‘We flew for 46 hours and 6 minutes. That makes our average speed 127 knots, 147 miles per hour. These are all significant records. We’ve flown further than any other balloon has ever flown.’
‘I’m dying for a hot drink,’ was all I could say, ‘and a log fire. And a sunny beach. Why aren’t we in California!’
‘Next time it’s the ultimate flight,’ Per started fantasising. ‘It’s round the world.’
When I peered out of the capsule I thought I saw something move. For a moment I thought that it was a dog and I had a surreal vision of somebody taking their dog for a walk along the frozen lake. As I watched the creature, it came up to the capsule and sniffed at it. It was an otter. It sniffed around us, then turned up its nose as if to say, ‘Big deal – a capsule,’ and slunk off. It was the only creature to have witnessed that we were the first to cross the Pacific – and it didn’t even have a camera.
Every five seconds of those eight hours the emergency bleeper went off, piercing our eardrums. As we huddled together, I relived the flight and wondered why I had trusted Per with my life. We had landed over 2,000 miles away from our destination; we had lost two fuel tanks; we had caught fire; we had flown across the Pacific in the dark with no radio contact. I remembered the previous flights – the first attempt from Japan had seen the balloon disintegrate and catch fire, and the Atlantic crossing had nearly killed us.
As Per talked about our flying round the world, I wondered whether I was mad to consider ever going with him again. I knew that he had pushed the technological boundaries of balloon flying further forward than anyone, but it was sad that we hadn’t developed a stronger bond with each other. I get close to most of the people I spend a long time with. But Per is not a team player. He’s a loner. He’s often difficult to read. He’s someone who is quick to criticise. I’d been brought up to look for the best in people. Per always seemed to find the worst. Despite this, we somehow managed to get on together as two opposites who can respect each other’s strengths and weaknesses. And when it comes to ballooning I have plenty of weaknesses for him to respect! He also has had to put up with every project we do being branded a ‘Branson’ or ‘Virgin’ challenge, and he copes with that very well. Certainly, we have been through more together than most people experience in a lifetime.
As I tried to imagine us setting off round the world in a high-altitude balloon, I realised that, for all our horrendous moments together, our balloon flights had been some of the greatest adventures of my life. During the rest of my life, I am – to a greater or lesser extent – in control of my destiny. Up in a balloon we are at the mercy of the elements, the technology, the teams of engineers who have built it, and we are 30,000 feet up. The odds are not the best but I have always been unable to resist taking on odds that look formidable and then proving them wrong. And once again fortune had been kind to us.
At last we heard the thudding sound of a helicopter’s blades. It got louder and louder, and then the helicopter circled overhead and landed beside us. We had the bags of videos and our logbooks ready, and we staggered over to the helicopter, Per limping with frostbite.
It was another four hours’ flight to Yellowknife. When we landed at a tiny airfield, the yellow fluorescent lights made blurred circles in the driving snow. We crunched across the snow to the hangar. Gusts of flakes blew across us as we opened the door and stepped inside.
There was Will, Mum, Dad, Per’s wife Helen, and some people from Yellowknife. I almost didn’t recognise anyone since they were all wearing strange bulky clothing: bright-red padded jackets and thermal trousers. They roared with delight when we came in.
‘Have a cold beer!’ Will shouted. ‘It’s all there is!’
Per and I ripped off the ringpulls and sprayed everyone there.
‘You’ve made it!’ said Mum.
‘Never again!’ said Dad.
‘What do you mean?’ Per joked. ‘We’re going round the world next time. If those fuel tanks had stayed on we’d be over England now!’
‘Have you got that letter I gave you?’ Mum asked me.
It was still in my trouser pocket.
‘It was written by some Japanese schoolchildren. You have to give it to the local child closest to where you land.’
One of the ground crew at Yellowknife had brought his six-year-old son along to see these two balloonists who had arrived from Japan, so I knelt down and gave him the letter.
‘It’s from some children who live in Miyakonojo in Japan,’ I told him. �
��You’d better go there one day. But perhaps not by balloon!’
Yellowknife town is so cold in January that diesel freezes solid. In order to stop your car from freezing, you either keep the engines running or plug them into special electric supplies which look like parking meters and heat the engines. We had a meal in the town’s largest steak house, to which half the people living in Yellowknife turned up. When we came out of the restaurant, we could hardly breathe for exhaust fumes. Most of the shops are in underground shopping malls, which are easier to heat without the wind-chill to worry about. During the meal a fax arrived from the new prime minister, John Major, congratulating us on the flight. Surely Yellowknife was one of the most remote places the 10 Downing Street letterhead has ever found itself.
The next day we said goodbye to the gold miners and fur trappers who had looked after us so well at such short notice. It’s not often they have guests ballooning down on them from Japan, and they invited us to come again. We flew to Seattle and then on to the warmth of Los Angeles. From there we caught the plane back to London, and I had a chance to read the newspapers and understand what was going on. The stock market had soared on the back of the invasion, and looking at the amount of firepower the Allied Forces were using it was hard to imagine that Iraq would survive for long. I spent some time talking to the crew and the pilots and heard how empty the flights were. One of the pilots warned me that the Gulf War was actually hiding a recession that was going to last a very long time.
‘After all the bombing is over and Saddam Hussein is dead,’ he said, ‘the world will suddenly realise that it wasn’t the “Mother of all Wars” which was the issue, but the “Mother of all Recessions”.’
Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way Page 28
