A band of low cloud and rain hung over Shannon, my destination. The Sun struggled through 30-knot headwinds. The weather wasn’t really good enough for VFR flying, but I dropped below the cloud and followed the Shannon River.
Shannon airport is the busiest on Ireland’s west coast, with about 1.7 million travellers passing through it every year. There is a local plane-spotting community too, which I discovered was following my progress online. Malcolm Nason turned up at the airport with his telephoto lens and took some very dramatic photos of the Sun landing on a wet and dreary runway.
I had half-expected to be forced to divert to another airport along the route, so I was relieved to arrive and see Anne. My next priorities were to visit the Foynes Flying Boat Museum, give a presentation to the Limerick Flying Club, and show Anne the stunning west coast of Ireland.
Foynes is a small town on the south bank of the Shannon Estuary. The airport is on the north side of the estuary, which flows into the North Atlantic. The nearest city is Limerick, which sits on the mouth of the Shannon River and has a population of 100,000.
In 1938, when flying boats dominated the transatlantic air route, Foynes was one of the biggest civilian airports in Europe. The estuary had two main advantages: it was sheltered from the ocean, and it was one of the closest points in Europe to North America. Ernest Hemingway, Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy flew through Foynes. The Pan Am Yankee Clipper became the first commercial flight to make it from the United States to Europe in one day when it landed at Foynes on 9 July 1939. Going by sea took ten days.
This rich history makes Foynes the perfect location for the world’s premiere flying boat museum. Its founder, Margaret O’Shaughnessy, has assembled a full-scale replica of the 32-metre-long Boeing 314 Clipper, the flying boat with which Pan Am opened up the world in the late 1930s and early 1940s; incredibly, it’s a flying boat similar in size to today’s Boeing 737. There’s a large collection of memorabilia and displays in the museum, which launched in 1989 and is located in the original shore-side terminal building and control tower, which have been wonderfully restored.
Anne and I had lunch with Mrs O’Shaughnessy, who would be retired if only her mind would stop thinking of great ideas. She was charming, organised and driven, just the qualities needed to pull off a venture like this. The fact she was still running it, and as enthusiastically as ever, was a great personal achievement.
The next day we drove north, to the city of Galway, where I wanted to buy safety equipment for the Atlantic crossing. Denmark’s aviation authorities, who control access to Greenland and the Faroe Islands, have equipment requirements for small planes. They include a life raft and an emergency radio beacon known as an EPIRB, which I already had, but also flares, rations and survival gear, such as a stove to melt snow or ice for water in the event of an emergency landing. I was surprised that a drysuit wasn’t on the list, given that the cold Atlantic water could kill a person in hours, even in summer, and hence was keen to acquire one.
Galway has a long maritime history, and I expected to find everything I needed at the city’s ship chandler, which sells maritime equipment. It had flares but little else, and I regretted not looking when we were in England. At a camping shop I bought a small, expensive stove burner with a gas canister housed in its own cooking pot. While I accepted that it made sense to carry one, I suspected the flame would easily blow out. And I certainly wasn’t going to light a naked flame in an inflatable raft.
At an electronics store across town I bought a couple of small torches and a new phone charger. I was amazed to find a stove system that was not only perfect but – ironically, given it was an electronics shop – ran on a concept straight out of high-school chemistry. Shaped like a small thermos, it had a removable inner liner and a teabag-like pouch, which sat between the inner and outer shells. When a small amount of water was added and the inner lining reinserted, the water on the pouch would trigger a chemical reaction that generated enough heat to boil water in five minutes. It was a brilliant, self-contained and reasonably priced stove without a naked flame, which made it eminently safer. I wondered why the camping store wasn’t selling them. I bought one and set aside the gas stove.
Now I had everything the Sun needed, except a drysuit, which was worrying me. But I had run out of shopping options.
The next day we took an old-style ferry to the Aran Islands, which are brutally stunning islands off the west coast that have been inhabited for thousands of years. We had a private tour with a retired fisherman in his van. As well as detailed information on the history of the islands, he complained bitterly about the damage done to Irish fishing by European quotas. He was very angry about his livelihood being taken away by policy-makers in Brussels.
We considered visiting Dublin but Google stopped us. As I was typing ‘things to do in Dublin’, I said to Anne, ‘If the number one thing to do is “drink Guinness”, we’re not going.’ Sure enough, it was. Neither of us drink beer, let alone Irish stout, plus we only had a few days left together and were enjoying exploring the rugged and isolated west coast.
After a few more great days, it was time for me to push on and for Anne to return to Melbourne. I dropped her at Shannon airport for an early-morning flight home via London. As is often the case, the airport and morning rush left our farewell all too brief. ‘Have fun,’ she said as we parted, ‘but please be careful.’
I returned the rental car and took a taxi to the small Coonagh Airfield. It felt very lonely in the cab. The goodbye with Anne had been too quick – I felt sad at its inadequacy, and daunted by what lay ahead. A few members of the Limerick Flying Club were there to see me off, which helped calm my nerves.
I planned a fly-by and a brief water landing in front of the Foynes museum. It would be a nod to history and a gesture of thanks to Mrs O’Shaughnessy. A one-hour flight would then get the Sun to the city of Sligo, where I’d refuel before pushing north to the Faroe Islands, which are about halfway between Scotland and Iceland in the treacherous North Atlantic.
John Brennan, an Irish Searey pilot who had served as my host in the area, was escorting me. I followed his plane for half an hour, around rain and clouds that seemed to be getting lower and darker by the minute. Just when I was considering turning back to Shannon, I heard John announce over the radio that he was diverting to Abbeyshrule, a small village in the middle of Ireland that was named Ireland’s tidiest town in 2012.
We landed mid-morning, expecting the weather to clear within a few hours. We officially gave up at 6.30 p.m. To keep us company over the course of the day, John’s wife, Caroline, drove from their home an hour and a half away. We had lunch at the local pub, the aptly named Rustic Inn. Fancying a coffee, I was pleased to see a commercial coffee machine behind the bar. When I ordered an espresso for myself and a latte for Caroline, the barmaid admitted she not only didn’t know how to use the machine, but was scared of it.
Still in my flying suit and with the pub all-but empty, I went behind the bar and trained the barmaid on the machine, which was similar to the ones at our cinemas in Australia. By the time we left, she was confidently making espresso and was able to heat and froth the milk quite well. Although my contribution was small, I felt I left Abbeyshrule a better place than when I arrived.
So, with a whole day passed, I was only 100 kilometres closer to New York. A local pilot lent us his hangar to house the planes overnight, and we drove to Sligo, where John and Caroline lived, and went to their favourite restaurant for dinner. Despite the seafood-heavy menu, I relished the opportunity to order a whole bottle of red wine, which I reasoned would be much more drinkable than the ‘by the glass’ fare I’d drunk for most of the journey. From a not-so-extensive wine list I splashed out on what I suspected would be the best option, with a touch of age, and asked for it to be decanted.
‘De-what?’ the waitress asked.
‘A decanter,’ I replied. ‘It’s what you put the wine in before serving it.’
‘I’m so sorry, si
r, but we don’t have one.’
I have never been good with ‘no’. I asked for an empty water jug, and into it I poured the wine. The transfer caused much consternation. Some might think I was being pretentious. Really, the blame should fall on John, whose cheeky Irish nature brought it out in me. Anyway, we had a great dinner, and I was amused to be sent, a couple of days later, a photo of a fascinating article in the local newspaper under the headline ‘Globetrotting pilot stops off in Sligo’. It didn’t mention the decanter.
A dozen Sligo pilots and their friends gathered the next morning for the Sun’s departure. They helped me fuel up, polish the screens and top up the brake fluid. A minced beef bun from a nearby fair was provided as in-flight catering. Two local aircraft, John’s Searey and a perfectly restored Piper J-3 Cub, were waiting in the air to see me off, and took the only airborne photographs and video I have of the Sun in flight.
I was deeply touched by this farewell. The Irish flying community had shown me great support, boosting my confidence. Somehow it made the trip feel like more than just a personal mission. When I met some of the people following my journey, I felt a sense of connection that meant I did not want to let them down. In John, I suspected, I had made a lifelong friend.
My original plan had been to fly to Iceland via the Faroe Islands, a self-governing territory overseen by Denmark. After choosing that route a few weeks earlier, I looked up the island’s weather records. More often than not, cloud completely covered the Faroes down to 300 feet; trying to land in conditions like that would be like high-diving into a metre of water.
Plan B was to follow the west coast of Scotland until I ran out of land, and then head straight for Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. Although that would involve a lot more time over the sea, the route would have two advantages: a healthy tailwind, which would increase my speed and reduce fuel usage, and two alternate landing sites if the weather turned bad, Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, the largest island in the Outer Hebrides, or, if I was really desperate, Vágar, the largest island in the Faroes.
The coastal flight was pleasant. But by the time I crossed into Scottish airspace, it was touch and go as to whether I could get to Reykjavík before its airport closed. As I was flying along the remote Scottish west coast, I had a phone signal coming in and out, which meant I could use the internet to check the weather at Vágar airport. The cloud there was between 300 and 800 feet, and it was raining so hard you couldn’t see anything. No thanks, I thought. Scotland it is.
The diversion was a great excuse to check out the Isle of Lewis. Like so much of Scotland, it is ruggedly beautiful and packed with physical history, including stone circles, old castles and prehistoric stone towers known as brochs. Stornoway, the main city, has a stunning castle that at the time I visited was being turned into a museum, and a very busy harbour which was home to a professional fishing fleet and many visiting yachts. There was even a yacht Anne and I had seen transiting the Caledonian Canal at Loch Ness two weeks earlier.
On our trip to Scotland a couple of weeks earlier, I had visited an innovative cinema I’d read about years before. The Screen Machine is a mobile movie house bankrolled by the Scottish government. Much like the travelling library that came to my primary school in rural Victoria, the cinema was built into a truck, and tours remote Scottish towns. Like a Transformer, the trailer expands to three times the width of the truck, and seating platforms and a screen unfold to construct an eighty-seat indoor cinema.
The audiences are hugely appreciative, and the system is relatively cheap to run. There is a single operator, who acts as driver, cinema ‘unfolder’, ticket seller, projectionist and usher. I had been doodling ideas for travelling cinemas for many years, and the Scottish project drove my conviction to push ahead when I returned to Australia.
Our East Timorese charity, Cinema Loro sa’e, was a good starting point. But the system would need fewer staff to be financially viable on a larger scale. I needed to transfer the concept out of my head and sketchbooks and build a working prototype. We could show movies in regional, rural and northern parts of Australia without cinemas, and eventually share stories in remote areas across the globe. I had spent countless hours thinking about it on this trip, sketching notes and ideas along the way. I planned to call it Screens Without Borders.
21.
Midnight Sun
‘A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.’
WILLY WONKA, WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971)
The weather in Reykjavík looked good. Even though there would be headwinds of between 10 and 20 knots, I expected to make the 575-nautical-mile trip with three to four hours’ worth of spare fuel. That would be enough to get to Iceland and back to the Faroe Islands if a wild storm or fog – aviation’s silent assassin – made landing impossible.
I woke before dawn and, after my morning coffee ritual, conducted a very thorough check of the Southern Sun. I had read the North Atlantic Operations and Airspace Manual, published by the International Civil Aviation Organization, and had been given a crash course on preparations and procedures for an ocean crossing, which included the possibility of ditching at sea. I had all the safety gear I’d brought from Melbourne and the extra items from Ireland. With those specific operating procedures to be followed for the journey ahead, the gravity of the undertaking sunk in. If something went wrong, I would be a long way from help.
Instead of flying straight, the Sun would travel in a leftwards arc. The route would include two imaginary markers over the ocean, known as boundary points and used by aircraft to report their position: the intersections of 61 degrees north and 11 degrees west, and 62 degrees north and 13 degrees west. There is safety in numbers: if the Sun went down, I wanted to be on a common air route. The slightly northerly path would make for lighter headwinds too.
Flying by visual flight rules over the Atlantic Ocean requires pilots to stay clear of what is known as ‘controlled airspace’. That is the part of the sky reserved for aircraft under the supervision of air-traffic controllers. Between Scotland and Iceland, the controlled airspace started at 6000 feet, which meant the Sun would have to fly at 4500 feet. Westerly flights are always at 2000-foot increments starting at 2500 feet, as long as there isn’t cloud, a system designed to eliminate the chance of VFR planes running into each other.
The staff in the Stornoway control tower were reassuring. I spent nearly an hour with them, studying the weather, discussing procedures, and making sure both that my flight plan was approved and that they knew how to look up the Sun’s location on my satellite tracking website if they couldn’t raise me on the radio. (I’d created a simple weblink for the tracking, which is still active every time I fly today; check it out at www.southernsun.voyage/where.) Even so, I was feeling more nervous than at any other time on the trip, or indeed in my entire flying career.
The weather conditions were only just acceptable as I left Scotland. Once the Sun was clear of land, the sea was pretty calm and the cloud was high enough for me to climb to 4500 feet, an altitude I maintained until I was an hour shy of Iceland. Not for the first time, I wished I had an autopilot. There were no other planes to check for, and nothing to see but water and clouds. With an autopilot to keep the plane flying straight, I could have written in my diary, started a novel or calculated pi to a gazillion places. Instead, I hand-flew all the way.
Autopilots used to be restricted to commercial aircraft. Howard Hughes was one of the first to use one, back in the 1930s, and he did a lot of work in their early development. It wasn’t until the 1980s that autopilots became common in light aircraft, in part because they enhanced safety, but also as solid-state technology had made them smaller and more affordable. In a difficult moment, such as when you run into cloud or experience heavy turbulence, it can be safer for a machine to fly. Just like car drivers, pilots can become drowsy after flying many hours and not realise they are in a slow descent. I had heard about people falling asleep while flying on autopilot, and tho
ught it might be safer if I always had a job to focus on.
The further north the Sun ventured, the colder it got. To save weight, before leaving Melbourne, the engineers and I decided to remove the heater system. I couldn’t see any need for it while flying from Australia to London. Now the situation was rather different. The sun was out, keeping my upper body warm, but despite two pairs of socks I was starting to lose feeling in my toes. I discovered that doing a hundred toe crunches warmed them up. Then I remembered the typical airline announcements about deep vein thrombosis and started trying to stretch, clench and crunch my muscles in my restricted position. It was probably a waste of time, but was something to do.
I found myself focusing on the fact I wasn’t wearing a drysuit, which is like a wetsuit for really cold water because it doesn’t let any water in at all. I looked out at the inhospitable North Atlantic Ocean, imagining how cold it must be. It dawned on me just how much trouble I would be in if I had to ditch.
The long passages over sea from Australia to Britain had all been over fairly warm water. I could have survived the elements in the life raft with what I was wearing. But if the Sun went down in the Atlantic, my overalls, merino T-shirt and cashmere sweater weren’t going to withstand the cold. I would die of hypothermia long before I ran out of food or drink. I mentally kicked myself for not trying harder to find a drysuit in Ireland, or even looking when I was in London. I was determined to find one in Iceland.
For the first time since leaving Australia, I had radio contact with air-traffic control continuously over the sea. Even 300 nautical miles from land I was able to reach Shanwick control in Ireland, which handed the Sun over to Icelandic control, and they were perfectly clear too. I had expected to have to relay position reports via airliners flying overhead, and so was very pleased with my new radio.
The first visual sign I had reached Iceland was the large rainclouds extending almost to the ground. I approached from the south-east. Reykjavík sits on a north-facing area of the south-west coast. I had a choice: fly above the cloud and a mountain between the coast and the airport, or descend through the cloud and follow the coast all the way around. While it would take nearly an hour longer, I chose the latter option, which would be much safer.
Voyage of the Southern Sun Page 15
