The further upstream the Sun progressed, the younger the Ole Miss got. The lake-like views of the previous day were replaced by rapids and a couple of small waterfalls. She was now looking like a small river, like Melbourne’s Yarra or Boston’s Charles, and was wandering all over the place, seemingly posing a question: north, east, west or south?
As I flew upstream of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the Mississippi passed through several shallow lakes and kept getting smaller, carving more intricate curves into the earth, and creating marshes and bogs. Ultimately she terminated at Lake Itasca, which happens to be the same shape as Lake Como, although much smaller. Their geographic similarity has no real relevance, although for me landing on both for the first time was sheer joy.
In the last hour of flying the river became so small it was hard to follow. But once the lake appeared on the horizon, I knew where to go. There was almost no wind. I landed on the lake at noon, shut down the engine and drifted while I soaked up the peace and ate some lunch. It was the fifth day of my adventure since leaving Florida, yet felt much longer, like a momentous achievement. The Southern Sun had conquered the Mississippi.
28.
Call of the Wild
‘At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you . . . and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now, you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem . . . and you solve the next one . . . and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.’
MARK WATNEY, THE MARTIAN (2015)
Sitting in a Seattle coffee shop on the first day of October with a bunch of seaplane pilots who knew their way around Alaska, I started to fear that I had flown as far as I would get. The Russians hadn’t come through with permission for me to fly through their airspace, let alone land at one of their airports. Alaska was billed as a no-go for newcomer pilots after September. I was scared of the wild weather and long distances between the Aleutian Islands.
Common sense said the trip was over. Winter was not far away. The Bering Sea was getting colder, and the Arctic ice sheet was advancing south. Ferocious headwinds would soon tear across the sky from Siberia, slowing a small plane like the Sun to the speed of a car in peak-hour traffic. After losing control near Goose Bay, I was even more nervous about being caught in a storm or cloud traversing the notorious Aleutians. And without a refuelling stop in Russia, I didn’t know how the Sun could get from Alaska to Japan.
I could have called it quits right there in Seattle, packed the Sun in a shipping container bound for Melbourne, and headed home after the greatest adventure of my life. I had set four records, travelled further in a tiny seaplane than anyone had ever before tried, made new friends and met generous strangers, and experienced the enormous personal satisfaction of pursuing a dream that had its gestation in a lonely teenage year far from home.
On the other hand, I had come this far, so why stop now? In a century of flight, no one had ever conducted a solo circumnavigation in an amphibian plane or flying boat. Becoming the first to do so would be rather splendid. Aviation world records aren’t set easily. The body that certifies them, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationalé, has strict requirements, including that a round-the -world trip must be completed in no more than 365 days. That ruled out storing the Sun and returning the following spring. Realistically, continuing now was my only chance to make a mark on aviation history, even if it was just a footnote.
More importantly, I wanted to keep going. For reasons I found it hard to articulate to anyone, including friends and family, I needed to arrive at Williamstown in the Sun, slowly motor up the yacht club ramp and walk the short distance home to our house. Flying home in a commercial plane would be a failure. Finishing was everything. Besides, what else was there to lose, apart from my life? And what is a life worth without discovery?
Decision time had arrived. I could continue to Alaska and try to cross the Pacific Ocean, or accept that the circumnavigation was beyond a small plane like a Searey. I was leaning towards shipping her home. Perhaps I could try again in a few years if I could find a bigger flying boat.
Then, over coffee with some local flyers, Captain Karen Stemco, a commercial seaplane pilot, piped up. ‘You really need to talk to Burke,’ she said. ‘Burke Mees. You know Burke?’
Burke is a veteran commercial seaplane pilot who flies the Aleutian Islands, which extend from the Alaskan mainland across the North Pacific. He is a legend, with incredible experience, which he shares through articles in aviation magazines. Karen knew him well. I’d read his articles but never met him. We called him on the spot.
For years Burke had flown a 1950s Grumman Goose, one of the most rugged, reliable and utilitarian amphibious flying boats, through the Aleutians, all year round. It was possible to do, he said, but there was an important ingredient for survival: patience. ‘Yes, there is bad weather, and plenty of average weather,’ he told us down a crackly phone line. ‘In between, there are glorious days. Take your time, accept getting stuck here and there for a few days, and you can make it.’ He had an ominous warning too: ‘There isn’t a crashed plane in the Aleutians that doesn’t have sun shining on it soon after.’
Wow, I thought. That is sobering. But . . . maybe I can do it.
I decided to weigh up the decision over the next couple of days while I enjoyed Seattle. I had wanted to visit for years. Not only is it the major American city that is probably most similar culturally to Melbourne, but I also admired its record of world-leading businesses, including Amazon, Boeing and Starbucks. Any place that can make a decent cup of coffee is okay in my book.
As much as I treasured my portable espresso machine, I was looking forward to real coffee shops. Ones that used porcelain. I wasn’t disappointed. My first Seattle coffee, with my host Walter, at Zoka on North 55th, was fabulous. It was made on a Slayer, a machine that is the Rolls-Royce – no, more the Bentley – of coffee machines, and built in Seattle. My hipster barista was oh so cool, with his carefully manicured facial hair. The double-shot skinny latte was magnificent. So good I had to have another. I spent the afternoon buzzing.
Boeing’s first aeroplane was a seaplane, the cleverly named Boeing Model 1. A replica was on display at the company’s Museum of Flight, next to its enormous assembly buildings at Boeing Field airport, where green primed-but-unpainted 737s waited on the tarmac to be dispatched to airlines around the world. The museum had prize exhibits for aviation enthusiasts, including a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, which could fly at three times the speed of sound, a former Air Force One and a Concorde. At the smaller end of the scale, the museum had a drone used for surveillance of the Somali pirates who hijacked an American cargo ship in an incident portrayed in the movie Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks. It even had used shells from the sniper rifle used against the pirates by US soldiers. The Boeing museum was very impressive, but there was another that was beckoning me to visit, one housing the granddaddy of all flying boats.
The Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum is in McMinnville, Oregon, a couple of hours south of Seattle by air. Its star exhibit is the Hughes H-4 Hercules, the largest flying boat ever. Built by Howard Hughes and flown but once, briefly, it was nicknamed, much to his chagrin, the Spruce Goose, because it was constructed mainly of birch ply due to lightweight-metal restrictions during World War II. Hughes hoped that the plane would revolutionise transatlantic travel, help the Allies win the war and neuter the threat of Germany’s U-boats. But the prototype, which was designated HK-1 and had eight engines, wasn’t completed until 1947.
It is unclear if the plane could have flown more than a short distance. Sitting in the cockpit, I was in awe of its size, and couldn’t imagine trying to get her to take off. I felt a strong connection with Hughes as I sat in his seat. He had been one of the great inspirations of my life. I’ve read every book I could lay my hands on and seen all the films that feature this unique character. Great achievements take determinatio
n and risk, and Hughes never gave up on his flying boat. Finally, and famously, she flew.
Sitting there, it became clear to me there was only one way home. A day later, the Southern Sun left Seattle, northbound for Alaska.
There were glorious blue skies for the flight, which I took as a good omen for the difficult journey ahead. I flew around the famous Seattle Space Needle on my way. There was a long flight ahead but I had travelled too far not to have a little fun, so I orbited the UFO-like restaurant atop the Needle. Not far north of Seattle, amid farming land, I saw the oddest thing: an eighteen-wheeler semi-trailer rig speeding around an oval racing track. I suppose they have to test them somewhere, I thought. Or perhaps it’s another niche American pastime?
The Sun headed north-west, over San Juan Island. I had planned a brief rendezvous en route. Soon I reached Orcas Island, where pilot and author Richard Bach lives in a large home on top of a hill. While lining up to land Puff at San Juan Island in 2012, Bach clipped some power lines and flipped upside down. At the age of seventy-six he was forced to spend four months recovering in hospital. The near-death experience inspired him to write a fourth part to Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Having read the book many times after discovering it as a teenager, I wanted to pay homage to its author. Dan Nickens had explained how to recognise his house, which was quite easy as it was alone, perched upon a hill. In salute I flew an orbit around the home, as I tried to fly higher, faster, further. Thanks, Richard, for a lifetime of inspiration.
To avoid having to clear customs and immigration twice in two days, I planned not to land in Canada. I did, however, fly for most of the day at 2500 feet through Canadian airspace, over the rugged coastline, dense forests and windy broad bays. The last couple of hours of the seven-hour flight forced me to weave between taller and taller mountains. Normally such flying would be stressful, but with such clear weather it was joyous. If it stayed like this, getting through the Aleutians would be a cakewalk.
The Sun arrived in Ketchikan, the oldest town in Alaska. Small and pretty, it faced the Inside Passage, a protected route north that provided safety for smaller aircraft and was popular with cruise ships. During peak cruising season, up to 10,000 tourists could descend on the town in a day, a number that astonished me – and that I was pleased to be avoiding. I had hoped to see The Martian at the town cinema, but by the time I arrived the film was half an hour in. At least I could get straight to bed. I knew that, when I awoke before dawn, I would wish I’d had more sleep.
The flight from Ketchikan to the Alaskan capital of Anchorage, my next destination, reminded me of Greenland. While the scenery was different, both towns were so different from what I was used to that I found them deeply beautiful in an almost surreal way. For much of the leg, out my left window I saw sea that was so clear it could have been the Caribbean. To my right, the scenery switched from fjords with glaciers eeking their way down to the sea, to snow-covered rocky mountains, to river deltas of sand flats and tributaries.
Anchorage’s large harbour and lakes are popular with seaplanes. But I chose to land at the international airport so I could grab a courtesy car and get to work chasing up my airway clearances, which were becoming a more pressing problem by the day. I needed either the Russians or the US Airforce to come through. I couldn’t see another way to get across the Pacific.
I managed to make contact on the phone with someone who worked in the control tower at the remote air base. Shemya Island has to be one of the loneliest military postings in the world. It was abandoned after World War II and then reopened during the Cold War as a long-range weather station and refuelling stop for the B-52 bombers that patrolled the border with the Soviet Union in case a nuclear war broke out. Today it has no civilian residents, and a small Air Force airport that can be used in emergencies by passenger aircraft.
A man in the tower said he couldn’t give me permission to land there, and that I would have to talk to his superiors at the Air Force base in Anchorage. I called the base, but they wouldn’t help.
‘Can I come down and speak to you?’ I asked.
‘No point,’ he said. ‘No civilian aircraft are allowed on the island, and even if we gave you permission, we don’t have any gasoline or avgas out there.’
Now I really needed the Russians to cooperate.
Anchorage has a Regal Cinema, which is probably the best national multiplex chain in the United States. The cinemas have big screens and slightly reclining, if sometimes creaky, seats, which are pretty comfortable. The Martian was the main feature they were showing, and the screen was so large it almost felt like you were watching it from the front row at an Imax cinema. The central message of the fabulous film was that there is always a way through. You just need to go back to the start, look at what you have to hand, reframe the data and keep rethinking the problem. The timing of this message was good for me.
The next day I planned to head to Dutch Harbor, with a refuelling stop after six hours’ flying at Cold Bay, the last airport with avgas on the Alaskan Peninsula, which juts out into the North Pacific. Because I needed to do some maintenance on the Sun, as well as buy some freeze-dried food and gloves and socks, I wouldn’t be able to leave Anchorage early in the day. Still, I estimated I’d get to Cold Bay a few hours before sunset.
Within an hour of leaving, the Sun hit low cloud over the Gulf of Alaska. There was a solid wall of white at 500 feet. Then 200 feet. Trying to fly under it, I was now so close to the water that I could make out every ripple in the churning sea. I started to get worried. Then the Sun ran into a layer of mist. Visibility fell to only a kilometre, and only patches of the sea peeked out below me.
Unprepared for this bad weather, I was on the verge of panic. Memories of plunging through the sky on the other side of Canada returned. This time, the Sun was so low she wouldn’t even have thirty seconds before crashing. Stay calm, I told myself. Stay calm. You need to find a way to safety.
My original plan had been to cross the land mass and approach Cold Bay from the north, which would have meant flying over some mountainous terrain, but that would have been suicide in this low cloud. So I cleared the cloud and took what I hoped would be a safe route along the southern side of the peninsula. Thirty minutes later, the weather wasn’t much better. I flew back and forth, trying to find a way through. I considered diverting to a large island about halfway between Anchorage and Cold Bay, Kodiak Island.
I didn’t want to stop. Every extra day reduced the Sun’s chances of making it across the Pacific, and I was focused on getting to the Aleutians as quickly as possible. There must be a way, I kept thinking. Niggling at me was my promise to Anne to be safe, and also Burke Mees’ warning: ‘There isn’t a plane crash in the Aleutians that doesn’t have sun shining on it soon after.’
I turned to my satellite-connected iPad and checked out the weather at the airports within a couple of hundred kilometres. There was low cloud everywhere. Wherever I went, I’d be flying into life-threatening weather. I turned around and headed back the way I’d come.
I had been defeated, but I was making the prudent choice.
29.
The Odyssey
‘Adversity is the state in which man most easily gets acquainted with himself.’
LIEUTENANT HOPPER, BATTLESHIP (2012)
Homer, Alaska, was the first town on the way back with a proper runway, a control tower, fuel and accommodation. Its name alone beckoned to the Southern Sun, on her odyssey.
Relief washed over me when the Sun touched down. I went straight up to the control tower and viewed the latest weather information. The controller called me a cab. While I waited downstairs, it dawned on me that I had been a fool. I had been so busy running around picking up supplies in Anchorage that I had forgotten to download the latest weather charts and radar images.
Satellites reveal clouds, while radar shows where it is raining. There was a huge band of cloud right where I had turned back. Had the Sun pushed on, she would have run into heavy ra
in. I had been mentally wrestling with a decision that, in hindsight, was simple: turning back was the only sensible option. Information was readily available that would have helped me understand this, but I hadn’t used it. American services for amateur pilots are the best in the world. I had become so used to not having it while flying that I hadn’t downloaded the information. It was a stupid mistake I kicked myself for making.
One nice surprise was the Homer Cinema, a classic ‘Mom and Pop’ country cinema. From the outside it looked like an old timber barn, but inside it had a lot of character, including couches at the rear of the cinema, which had found favour among the town’s teenagers in particular. It showed a mix of new releases and alternative and art films, much like we did at our country cinema in Bairnsdale. There was even a Halloween screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show imminent – which is where you find yourself asking, ‘So you just happened to have a set of fishnets at home, did you, John?’ (There’s always at least one!) The pièce de résistance was the old projector, which after being replaced by a digital system had been reimagined by a local artist into a robot objet d’art.
The next morning I studied the weather radar over and over. While there was rain about, the clouds were stable and not too low for flying. There was bad weather coming, though, and the following day it looked like cloud would close in over a huge area around the Alaskan western peninsula. Wherever I got to today, I would likely have to stop for a few days, so I tried to find somewhere interesting. The historic town of Dutch Harbor was achievable. It was one of the few American towns bombed by Japan during World War II – and a place Playboy once described as having the toughest bar in America.
Voyage of the Southern Sun Page 21
