I never really managed to make any good friends at that school, certainly none I recall today, and I still have a scar from when I was stabbed in Year Nine. My attacker didn’t welcome my suggestion that her black moccasin slippers were an overly broad interpretation of the school’s uniform requirement of black shoes. Looking back, she was probably right: I should have minded my own business. My lack of an inner monologue can sometimes cause problems. It’s a small scar anyway.
Before the internet and email, organising an international school exchange was pretty hard. It often meant repeating a year, too, because the different seasons in the Northern Hemisphere put your classes out of sync. Instead, I arranged to spend a year living with my maternal grandparents in the English county of Devon, and I was generously accompanied to London by my paternal grandparents. Over this splendid year I discovered how comfortable I was with my own company. I lived in an attic room at the top of a narrow staircase. I completed Year Ten by airmail correspondence.
I became a creature of routine. My grandparents and I had breakfast at the same time every morning. My schoolwork was done by lunch-time. Once or twice a week we would drive to another town, or Dartmoor National Park, or a quaint pub for a ploughman’s lunch, or a tiny church. On other days I would walk around Brixham, our seaside fishing village, for hours. I got to know some of the fishermen and a man who ran a bookshop. I walked every street, laneway and the breakwater, which is over a mile long. I practised throwing a boomerang in a park until I got quite good at it. I spent a lot of time sitting by the shore, looking at the small boats at anchor and the seagulls soaring on the afternoon sea breezes. I dreamed of sailing one of those small boats to Australia, and of flying like the gulls.
Several books I read during that period of solitude helped shape the man I became. I still read them today. Robin Lee Graham’s Dove captivated me. As a sixteen-year-old boy, Graham set out from California in a tiny sloop, intending to sail around the world. He took years to do it, struggled physically and mentally, but made it eventually. Inspired, I researched which boats I could sail from England to Australia. I bought a sextant and taught myself how to navigate by the sun. I had learned to sail on a dam on our farm, and graduated to the waters of Western Port Bay and the Gippsland Lakes. Surely I can do this, I thought. My father vetoed the plan, which was probably just as well.
Born to Win was the story of John Bertrand, the skipper of Australia II. The book details the years of build-up and the campaign that led to Bertrand’s victory in the 1983 America’s Cup, the first time the famous boat race wasn’t won by the American team – a triumphant ending of the longest winning streak in sporting history. That was powerful stuff for a fifteen-year-old. The central message was that success doesn’t just happen. The boat’s winged keel wasn’t a magic bullet, and Bertrand led a team of skilled and focused athletes. To achieve something like that, you have to be determined, work at it, be smart about it. Bertrand won the America’s Cup the year before I lived in Devon. I watched the races at night on a five-inch black-and-white television, and they had a powerful effect on me as a young sailor. Bertrand became my boyhood hero.
Within Bertrand’s book was a reference to another book that had influenced him so much that he carried it around like a personal bible. Jonathan Livingston Seagull was a novella published by Richard Bach in 1970. At fifteen, I had never read anything like it before. It is written like a fable, the tale of a seagull learning to push the boundaries of flying. It is really about the search for perfection. Given the hours I spent watching seagulls on the harbour, dreaming of flying, and my growing realisation that I didn’t want to wander through life but strive for great things, the book became very important to me. I would read it many times over the years. By coincidence, Bach is a highly accomplished pilot himself, and until recently flew a Searey which he loved and had christened Puff.
My English grandparents are no longer alive. But I wanted to introduce Anne to the seaside village where they had shown me great warmth, love and hospitality, and the place that, I realised, was really the starting point of the Southern Sun’s journey. We spent a morning in Brixham, where we looked for my grandparents’ old house and visited the pier and the harbour. It was strange returning. The town brought back some powerful, distant memories, but seemed small and run-down compared with thirty-two years earlier.
Having arrived in England, I wasn’t certain what my next step would be. Going home was the least interesting option. My long-held ambition to circumnavigate the world, which I had suppressed thus far, suddenly seemed plausible.
‘You’ve been talking about doing a circumnavigation most of your life,’ Anne said. ‘You thought it would be on a yacht but the Southern Sun is still a boat. Just keep going.’
Just keep going.
But I didn’t want to get too far ahead of myself. We had plans for a few weeks’ exploring the north of England and the Scottish Highlands, so I decided that, after that, we’d return to London, reunite with the Southern Sun and fly to New York. After that, I could plan a crossing of the Atlantic. And then we could see what happened next. Bite-size pieces.
I rang Mike Gray, my flight agent, and told him what I wanted to do. I would need clearance to fly through Ireland, Iceland, Greenland and Canada. The United States would not require it, as the plane was registered there. If that went well, I might then be heading for Russia, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia again. For the first half of my trip, he’d had six months to organise the permissions. This time I gave him two weeks.
The Sun needed a thorough maintenance check. Gary Masters, an aircraft engine mechanic, performed a once-every-200-hourly service. Fortunately, he reported that the Sun was in perfect condition, except for her radio, which had been getting worse and worse. The problem had first surfaced in Darwin, when early-morning moisture from grass had seemed to short-circuit the connections. In India it got really bad. After leaving Ahmedabad I lost contact with the control tower in less than half an hour, which was only about 70 kilometres. Sometimes I could transmit a respectable couple of hundred kilometres ahead of me; at other times 50 kilometres seemed the maximum. This had happened all along the way, and I wondered if the propeller’s stainless-steel edges were interfering with transmissions. Or maybe it was the engine’s electrics. In Australia I’d never tried to transmit so far, I realised; perhaps the radio had always been that way.
A fully functioning radio was crucial. While over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Sun would be hundreds of kilometres from land. I had to be able to communicate with air-traffic controllers, not just in an emergency but also to update them on my position. If I couldn’t reach them, I needed at least to ask overhead jets to relay messages. I could only enter controlled airspace with a radio.
An avionics technician tested the radio. Something was definitely wrong. He wasn’t sure what, although he was convinced the aerial and other components were okay. I sent the radio for repair to the manufacturer in Australia, XCOM Avionics. The company’s owner, Michael Coates, had been following my progress online, and very kindly sent me a new radio without charge when he learned of the problem.
The day before I got started on stage two – the Sun’s second act – I held court at the Damyns Hall Aerodrome clubhouse. Speaking to a few dozen pilots and aviation enthusiasts, I used a portable projector I’d bought in London to show photos and video of the trip. The audience seemed fascinated, and I felt a bit like Alby Mangels.
I finished with a revelation. ‘Tomorrow I’m flying to New York in the Southern Sun, and from there I hope to continue all the way to Australia,’ I said.
The room was silent. Rather than the whoops of encouragement I had expected, there was just muted shock. I knew what they were all thinking: Really? In that?
The airfield’s chief flying instructor, Deepak Mahajan, retrieved a book from his office. It was called Decision Height: England to Canada in a Microlight, and the author was Jon Hilton. ‘You’d better read this,’ he told me.
19.
Dumb and Dumber
‘Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this.’
HARRY DUNNE, DUMB AND DUMBER (1994)
Imperial Airways and Pan Am flew between London and New York in 1938. Pan Am was the American international carrier, while Imperial was the dominant carrier of the British Empire. Owned and subsidised by the British government, Imperial later merged with other airlines to eventually become British Airways. Imperial transported 50,000 people between 1930 and 1939. Its long-range services for wealthy passengers and mail were a model for the flying boat service between Sydney and London, which was operated jointly by Qantas and Imperial.
Just like the ‘Kangaroo Route’, the transatlantic trip began in London with a train to Southampton. From there it was a quick flight on Imperial’s Short C-class or Pan Am’s Boeing 314 flying boats to Foynes, landing on the Shannon River, near Limerick on Ireland’s west coast, for refuelling. Next the passengers flew across the North Atlantic to a small Canadian town – Botwood, on the island of Newfoundland – and then south to New York.
Even with its extra tanks, the Southern Sun didn’t have the range to fly direct from Ireland to Canada. Striking a balance between history and modern-day exploration, I came up with a modified route: London, Southampton Waters, Limerick, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland and New York City. I could have done the trip in half as many stops, but I wanted to explore on the ground as well as in the air. The shorter legs, of four to six hours each, should make weather delays less frequent, I reasoned, because I wouldn’t require good conditions for a full eight or ten hours.
My departure date was set for 7 July, which happened to be Jack’s twenty-second birthday. Anne dropped me at the aerodrome and said a quick goodbye. We planned to see each other later that day in Limerick. How hard could it be to cross the Irish Sea? After a few days holidaying on the Irish west coast, we would have a more serious farewell.
Anne headed to the other side of London, to Heathrow, to catch an Aer Lingus flight. Confident I would beat her to Ireland, I decided to give the Sun a thorough clean and double-check the engine, which had just been serviced, for anything that looked loose or out of place.
I noticed a tube coming from the air box hanging next to a bottle that catches overflowing oil from the main oil reservoir. A hole in the top of the oil bottle seemed to be the same size as the tube. So I inserted the tube into the bottle – it fitted perfectly. It must have popped out during the service, I thought, proud of my minor repair.
After checking there was enough oil and fuel I said goodbye to Deepak and a few club members, and turned on the engine. The Sun taxied to the start of the runway. I lined up the runway and applied full power.
The Sun felt like she was slipping on wet tiles. The engine misfired and lost all power. I immediately cut the throttle to idle. The engine sounded fine. Maybe it was a glitch? I taxied back to the start of the runway and opened up the throttle again. The same problem occurred. At 4000 revolutions per minute the engine was fine, but at 4500 revs it wouldn’t run properly.
It was the beginning of a long and frustrating day of self-doubt and embarrassment. Elated after the success of the flight from Australia, I thought the Sun was fundamentally reliable. I prided myself on my ability to fix faults. Within the cinema industry I have often been able to solve technical problems that others couldn’t by going back to the basics. So, what could possibly have caused this?
With a mooring rope I tied the Sun’s tail to a fence and started up the engine to re-create the problem while stationary. It sounded like there wasn’t enough fuel getting to the engine. I tried leaving the throttle in position. The revs would plunge, then return, then plunge and then return again.
What had been done in the service that might affect the fuel flow? The primary fuel filter had been changed. Maybe it had been put in backwards? It was an easy mistake to make. Alas, it was in the right way. The next suspect was the gascolator, a device that filters out fine debris from the fuel and creates a swirling motion that separates any water. The bowl was dropped out and cleaned during the service. I completely disassembled it to be sure it hadn’t been damaged or reassembled incorrectly, but it was fine.
It was time to use a lifeline: I called the mechanic who had serviced the engine. He seemed stumped. He was in another part of England and couldn’t get down to help me. He suggested partially disassembling the carburettor, which injects fuel into the pistons. That didn’t fix the problem either. I really wanted to call two Searey maintenance experts I knew, one in Melbourne and another in Florida, but the time difference meant they were probably asleep.
An awful thought dawned on me. Had I mistakenly bought diesel instead of petrol? For the next hour I convinced myself I had. I smelt and felt the fuel, which didn’t seem right. Using the wrong fuel can damage an engine; if I had made this basic mistake, the second leg of the trip could be over before it began.
Deepak suggested putting a few drops of the Sun’s fuel onto a piece of white paper next to a drop from some fuel of his we knew was okay. Once it had evaporated, the residue and colour would indicate if one contained diesel. We conducted the rudimentary test. Thankfully, the drops appeared identical, which meant there was no diesel in the tanks.
After I’d spent half a day trying to fix the Sun, it was morning in Florida. I rang Russell Brown, a Searey expert who does all of the factory annual inspections and had travelled to Australia to help prepare the Sun in February. He knew the Southern Sun and her engine backwards. Everything he suggested I had already tried, or didn’t have the skills or equipment to do.
Depressed, I was ready to put the plane into a shipping container and go home. Maybe I had only enough luck to get me to England, and I just wasn’t supposed to go heading off across the Atlantic Ocean?
By this time Anne had landed in Ireland, and I called her with the news that I wouldn’t be joining her that night. As I had no idea what was wrong, I might not see her tomorrow either, I said. Guilt welled up inside me. She had flown to another country to meet me and was now stranded. Her opinion was that it must be something simple and would be fixed by the morning. I wasn’t convinced.
Faced with my distress, the Rotax mechanic who had serviced the Sun a few weeks earlier, Gary Masters, put off another job and promised to get to the airfield by 7.30 a.m. I was filled with relief that he had agreed to help me out, but also guilty that he would be making a three-hour drive before dawn. There was nothing else to do but book into a hotel. Alan Sutton again provided the transportation, kindly driving me around until we found a room.
I didn’t want to do anything other than have an early dinner and go to bed, but I started reading the book Deepak had given me. Amateur pilot Jon Hilton decided in 2013 he wanted to cross the Atlantic. He got in his two-seater aircraft, a similar size to the Sun, although much sleeker and faster, and flew to Canada pretty much along the route I planned. Upon arriving, he promptly turned around and flew back. Along the way he encountered a lot of bad weather, especially low cloud, and found himself flying only a few hundred feet above the water for hours at a time, which is physically exhausting and very dangerous.
It was not what I wanted to hear. Increasingly anxious, I couldn’t stop reading. The author seemed to write with such glee about the weather he had to fly through. To me, the flying was risky and not to be bragged about. He was awarded the Britannia Trophy by the Royal Aero Club of Britain for outstanding aviation achievement.
I had a very restless night’s sleep.
I got up early and headed to Damyns Hall. What disappointment will today bring? Gary was already there when I arrived and we got stuck into the fault-finding. He’d never seen a problem like it. The pain in the pit of my stomach grew more acute.
He checked the carburettors again. They were fine. He took out the spark plugs, which had some unusual oil stains. Oil could be
leaking from the turbocharger into the cylinders, he said.
‘But that’s why there’s a drain tube on the air box – so that any oil that finds its way up there can drain out,’ I said. ‘In fact, I popped the tube back into its bottle yesterday.’
Like a thunderbolt, it hit us. The breather tube was the only equipment that had changed since the service, when everything was fine. Gary explained that the tube was to allow air to bleed from the air box, which provided the oxygen needed to combust the fuel. It wasn’t meant to sit in the bottle. We took the tube out and started the engine, with the Sun still tied to the fence; we revved her to 5000 revs. The engine sounded fine – it was now running perfectly. Oops.
A simple hose, put in the wrong place by an at times misguided and now apprehensive man. Me.
20.
A Good Year
‘Venture outside your comfort zone. The rewards are worth it.’
RAPUNZEL, TANGLED (2010)
The first stop, if only briefly, on the way to New York was Southampton Waters. The Deputy Harbour Master, by now familiar with a rather enthusiastic Australian obsessed with historical re-creations, granted the Southern Sun permission for another touch-and-go. Strong winds buffeted the Sun as she climbed back out over the trees along the shoreline and headed west. Just past Bristol, a large rainstorm loomed ominously over her route, which I avoided by flying through the outskirts of airspace under the control of Cardiff airport.
The sky cleared over the Irish Sea but closed in again over Ireland. It was striking how different the Irish farms looked from the British. They were much smaller. Lines of trees, acting as windbreaks, ran along almost every boundary. In England, the eldest son usually inherited the family property. In Ireland, it was traditional to leave property to all male offspring, which resulted in estates being carved up into ever-smaller farms with each generation.
Voyage of the Southern Sun Page 14
