Departing Homer took me straight out over water. The previous day’s weather system had barely moved, but now I was mentally prepared for a difficult flight. After thirty minutes at 500 feet, I descended to 250 feet for an hour – such ultra-low-level flying is allowed only when it’s absolutely necessary. Once the Sun was clear of the low-pressure system, the day become gloriously clear. What a bizarre part of the world for weather, I thought as I looked across at the land out to my right and the sea below.
The Sun got to Cold Bay in plenty of time to refuel and make Dutch Harbor by dusk. I called ahead to check on accommodation, which I almost never did, and found that the one and only hotel in town was booked out. It must have been my sixth sense kicking in.
Cold Bay was a good place to store a plane, but not so good for humans. Recognised as the most overcast town in the United States, on average it lies beneath a blanket of cloud for 304 days of the year. Not something to put on the tourist brochure. During World War II, large dugouts along the side of the runway were created to protect American bombers from Japanese air raids. They are now used as weather shelters for private aircraft.
The Sun was safe from the wild wind gusting in from the Bering Sea. Sadly, though, there was little for her owner to do. There was no mobile phone reception in the town, and the internet was painfully slow. There was one store, one bar, one rather basic library and a post office. The school had closed due to lack of children. After an eighteen-minute walk I had seen all there was to see. The town store had a choice of magazines: Duck Hunting and The Rifleman, the journal of the National Rifle Association. The Cold Bay Lodge, where I was staying, was like a boarding house.
On my first day in Cold Bay the weather was so horrible that I spent it entirely in my sparsely furnished room, apart from a short visit to the store. I sent emails, booking some films for our cinemas back home, but with the internet so bad I couldn’t watch trailers; I just had to trust the details I could glean from IMDB. I also chased up my requests to fly through Russia. Amid the isolation, my mind started wandering, and I couldn’t help but ponder if they knew about my Soviet passport . . .
I watch a lot of movies. Sometimes, on reflection, when I wonder what I was thinking, I question whether too much cinema has dulled my sense of reality. In the mid-1990s, before widespread use of the internet, I was known to peruse the esoteric mail-order ads in the backs of magazines such as Popular Science. That’s how I came to purchase a USSR passport.
It was what’s known as a novelty passport, and was issued after the USSR had ceased to exist. The ad said it was a great safety net if you were ever kidnapped. Like I said, my sense of reality may have been somewhat dulled.
A few years later I secured the 2000 world 2.4mR class sailing championships for Melbourne. People from over a dozen countries were coming to compete, and I was determined to make it a successful event for our club and city. I had one of the small yachts and wanted to race. I don’t quite recall why – I think just to have as many countries as possible – but rather than enter as myself, I decided to enter as Mikhail Smetinsky, the name in my ‘other’ passport. I set up a hotmail account under that name and emailed the manager of a boatbuilding company, asking to charter one of their boats. I happened to own the boat company, and the manager who received the email, Marie-Cecile, sat three desks away from me.
I could hear her excitement each time she received one of Mikhail’s emails. She was especially enthralled when a brown paper bag with cash for the charter fee arrived mysteriously at the reception of our building. As the event got closer, the reality of my silly idea dawned on me. Each team was expected to participate in a street procession behind their national flag. How could I turn up without being recognised?
Nervously, I arrived hidden behind a hat and glasses. The first day’s racing was very windy, so I obscured my face under a jacket hood. No one called out the mysterious ‘Soviet’ visitor. The waves were quite large, and a lot of water came over the side of my boat – an awful lot. Then it sank. A rescue boat came over to see if the Russian competitor was okay. A volunteer from the yacht club looked down while handing me the hose for a pump and said, ‘Um, is that you, Mike?’ For the second time that day I had a sinking feeling.
The story soon spread like wildfire through the club and was deemed pretty funny. Now, I couldn’t help wondering how far the story had travelled . . . Could it be part of the reason that, after months, I was getting absolutely nowhere with the Russian authorities?
The next day, I walked around Cold Bay, took a few photos and checked out the wharf, which other residents of the lodge were repairing. Half in jest, I asked the lodge’s lovely owner, Mary, if there was a cinema in town. She told me an amazing story. Cold Bay was once a US Air Force base, and home to some 750 families. They had various community facilities, including a cinema. When the Air Force wound down the base in the late 1980s, it buried all of their buildings, including the cinema, so they wouldn’t decay in the open and become dangerous eyesores. Somewhere, under a mound of dirt, was an intact cinema with all its equipment in place. If only I’d brought a shovel.
If my mission had been to find a real-world Basil Fawlty, I would have succeeded at the Cold Bay Lodge. Mary’s husband, Bill, a former Navy man, seemed to regard lodgers as disruptions to the tranquillity of his isolated life. He spent his days in a reclining chair, watching Fox News and grunting at the parlous state of the world.
The first morning I was there, I came down for breakfast at 8.30 a.m. I had set no alarm, knowing I was going to be housebound all day due to the bad weather.
‘Good morning, sunshine,’ came the surly greeting. ‘Good of you to wake up.’
I was a little taken aback, and gingerly took my seat at the breakfast table, where I was pleasantly greeted by Mary and asked what I’d like to eat. She cheerily poured me some coffee and went about cooking. Then Bill got up from his throne to talk to me at the table.
‘Listen,’ he snarled, ‘I don’t know how things are done where you’re from, but breakfast here is between 7 and 8 a.m. My wife works hard enough without you making things harder on her, so tomorrow be here on time.’
I felt like there must be a candid camera somewhere. Who talks to anyone like that? I was so shocked that I apologised, saying I hadn’t been made aware there was a set breakfast time.
‘Well, you’ve been told now, so don’t do it again,’ he shot back as he sauntered away to continue watching the repetitive news feed.
My delicious breakfast soon arrived, and Mary asked me about Australia and my trip and couldn’t have been more delightful. I felt for her – she seemed isolated by more than just geography.
Everyone else I met in Cold Bay was friendly. There were about fifty permanent residents, plus visitors working on infrastructure projects or hunting during the ‘good’ weather. Planes were used like pick-up trucks, and it seemed every second person had a pilot’s licence. Their Piper Super Cubs were particularly impressive. With their big tyres these can land just about anywhere; the ones I saw had rifles mounted to the wing struts, just in case there were any bears around when they landed.
Refreshed with optimism from watching The Martian, I spent the day in my room on the dial-up internet trying to work out how to get home. I ripped up my plan and started from scratch. I considered a multitude of options. Maybe south from Adak via Wake Island, and then across the warmer Pacific islands? No, Wake was closed to outside visitors, and I was advised that they didn’t have fuel anyway. Everything else seemed out of range – but maybe there were other parts of Russia I had not yet considered? There was still hope. A new plan would take the Sun to a different part of Russia. It wouldn’t be the closest but the airport seemed more cooperative, and it had the fuel I needed. Thanks, Matt Damon, I thought. I’m busting out of here.
After three days the weather looked like it would be clear the next morning. I planned to leave at dawn. After an early breakfast, Bill’s ‘hospitality’ peaked as I was preparing to leave.
‘Do you pay a bond to be allowed to fly here?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I replied, preparing myself for what I knew was coming next.
‘We’ve had a few of you Lewis and Clark types through here. The last one never made it to Russia. Never heard of again. They wasted millions looking for him. Just doesn’t seem right.’
I knew it was just a throwaway comment from a grumpy old man, but Bill’s gibe about the lost pilot hurt. Mental framing is important, and focusing on what could go wrong is not helpful when you’re in the air. Once I was on my way, I was soon flying over a vast and very rough ocean. As the Sun battled through high winds and above huge waves, melancholy descended on the cockpit. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Bill had said, and what would happen if I had to ditch at sea. I wondered if I would be able to get the life raft out before the Sun sank, if the emergency beacon would work, and how long it might take to be rescued. They were depressing thoughts, and I was annoyed at myself for dwelling on them, especially as I’d avoided them for the rest of the journey.
In Seattle I’d bought a new headset that had bluetooth, which meant I could connect it to my iPhone. For the first time on the entire trip I was able to listen to some music. But I only had a few albums on my phone to choose from. I started with some early Pink Floyd, which can be soothing but now seemed so morose I had to rummage for something else. Oh dear . . . The only other album I had was The Complete Speeches of Winston Churchill. The great orator filled the void and lifted my spirits. Tally ho, indeed.
There were strong headwinds en route, so I flew the whole seven-hour leg at between 300 and 500 feet. At one point I made out a ship on the horizon, and as I approached I saw it was a huge fishing trawler. Seeing it smash through each enormous wave highlighted for me how big the breaking seas were – I didn’t envy the crew.
I had been roughly tracking a string of uninhabited islands and rocky outcrops. That’s what pilots flying visual flight rules do, especially those in single-engine planes: follow any semblance of land to reassure ourselves in case of an engine failure. In truth, most of these remote islands would offer little help if the worst happened. Just short of Adak, my destination, I made out an outcrop with a difference. It was almost conically round, and as I got closer I could see it was a perfectly shaped Mount Fuji–style dormant volcano. I climbed to 1000 feet to get a better look. It was spectacular, magnificent and kind of scary. The centre was filled with calm, iridescent bluey-green water that was starkly different to the sea crashing around it.
Next, Adak Island came into view. The runway was so wide that I was able to land diagonally across it, into the strong wind, which was safer than what is known as a crosswind landing. I taxied to the only building and was surprised to receive a call on the radio offering directions – the tower was unmanned. I looked around and saw a large yellow pick-up truck. After I shut down the Sun, the truck drove over and the airport manager climbed out.
‘Oh, a Searey,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted one of those.’
In the 180 days I had been travelling, Vince was the first person at any airport who knew what type of aircraft the Southern Sun was.
My heart soared – this had to be a good omen. Maybe I would make it all the way round the world after all.
30.
Castaway
‘Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse wouldn’t quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he churned that cream into butter and crawled out.’
FRANK ABAGNALE SR, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (2002)
The Aleutians are a string of volcanic islands that stretch from mainland Alaska to eastern Russia. This sparsely inhabited environment (most of it Alaskan territory) is a different world. Among aviators and seafarers, the islands are known for their high winds, heavy rain and persistent fog.
A mostly barren rock in the centre of the chain, Adak was once a naval base home to a few thousand people. By the time the Sun arrived, only a hundred remained, most of them indigenous Aleuts. Adak is the last inhabited island and the most westerly outpost of US soil with a population and a post office. The one school has twenty-one children, and there are two shops, one diner and a cafe. There are lots of buildings, but most are uninhabited. It felt like a ghost town.
Michael and Imelda run the Blue Bird Cafe out of an old US Navy home. They keep an upstairs room available for the rare visiting pilots, which was simple, comfortable and furnished in the 1980s, when the Navy left town. Seeing that I was having difficulty walking after my long, cold flight, Michael lent me a pair of old insulated boots, which were deliciously warm.
An Orion navigator, Michael was posted to the island by the Navy decades earlier. After retiring from the military, he returned to Adak to work in the fishing fleet, and ended up opening the cafe. Luckily for him, his wife, Imelda, is a skilled and organised cook. The logistics of maintaining a cafe in such an isolated place are tricky. They rely on two double garages full of dry foods, multiple deep freezers, fridges and irregular supply ships. And a dog called Lucky, who scares the rats away from all the food. And lots of planning. Nothing is easy out there.
Adak would be my home for at least a week. I arrived on a Saturday, and was advised that the earliest I might be granted permission to enter Russian airspace was the following Sunday. The Japanese aviation regulators, who in different ways were almost as difficult as the Russians, had cleared me to arrive on the Monday. The timing would be tight, but I was confident it would work out.
An airport in the far eastern city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk had agreed to let me land as long as the Sun got a green light from the Russian federal aviation agency for the airspace clearance. The one glitch was that the airport was beyond the Sun’s range, and no other Russian airports had responded to my request for landing permission. I needed to organise a pitstop. The perfect place would have been the military airport on Shemya Island, Eareckson Air Station, the second-last piece of US territory at the western end of the Aleutians. But as I had discovered in Anchorage, the Air Force was unlikely to let me in.
There is one last island in the Aleutians, 50 kilometres west of Shemya, called Attu. It’s part of the state of Alaska, but Attu’s only inhabitants are the large rats which have the run of the empty buildings. Sitting in my bedroom above the Blue Bird Cafe, I scoped out Attu on Google Earth. A runway was still there, and half of it looked in reasonable condition. The surface wasn’t broken up or cracked, or covered by debris. The satellite photo wasn’t current, so I could not be totally sure, but Attu seemed like my best chance – perhaps my only chance – of getting across the Pacific. If I could leave some fuel there and then return to top up in Adak, the Sun would theoretically have the range to make it to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in Russia.
Attu was 377 nautical miles away, which would take about five hours in good conditions. If the runway was land-able, I would look for a place to store the petrol and return to Adak. I would go back to Attu once permission had been granted to fly through to Russia and the weather was clear enough for me to safely cross the North Pacific.
I considered spending a night on Attu and leaving before sunrise so the Sun could arrive in Russia in daylight. After the difficulty I’d had getting permission to enter Russia – they just seemed paranoid about foreign private aircraft – I didn’t want any confusion about who I was or where I was going to land.
For five days, morning and night, I obsessively checked the weather. Twice when I thought it might be clear enough to leave the following day I got up at 6 a.m., adrenaline surging, and looked out the window at a thick fog. Deflated, I went back to bed each time. When I wasn’t checking the weather on the dial-up internet, I was staying in touch with home by email. Most work matters were now being handled by others, but it was pretty surreal to think I was on an almost deserted North Pacific island booking movies to play in Australia, via email with people who assumed I was sitting in my office at the Sun Theatre in Yarraville!
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sp; On the sixth day the regular morning fog and rain cleared by 9 a.m., revealing a cobalt-blue sky. My hopes soared. I had already filled up five flexible jerry cans with 110 litres of petrol, which I stowed on the passenger seat. I took off and headed west. The 760-nautical-mile round trip would take ten hours, I calculated, which was safely within the twelve-hour fuel range of the Sun’s main tanks. My course took me over the few islands west of Adak. If the fuel-laden Sun went down, I wanted to be close to land.
The sky was so clear that I began to question the Aleutians’ reputation for bad weather. A few hours in, a light-grey dot appeared on the horizon. It grew bigger as I got closer. Wow, I thought. The US Navy has a ship out here protecting the islands. That’s incredible for such a remote place. The ship seemed to be steaming directly towards me. Perhaps it was wondering why an aircraft would be flying at 500 feet at 80 knots, which is very low and very slow, tracking straight for a US Air Force base. I began feeling a little apprehensive.
But the warship was a creation of my imagination. In fact it was a fishing trawler, which looked grey because it was being followed by thousands of seagulls. And it wasn’t heading for me; I was heading for it. Fixated on the boat, I had steered the Sun 10 degrees left of my course. I laughed at my own paranoia and foolishness.
The islands along the route were all uninhabited, except for the second-last, Shemya (which is sometimes also called Shemiya). Ten miles out, I called the Eareckson control tower on the radio. Acting as though I flew along the border between the Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea every day, I casually advised that the Sun, which I knew was not welcome on their runway, would be flying by.
‘Shemiya, Searey November Four Seven Three X-ray Papa,’ I said.
‘Ah, aircraft calling Shemiya?’ came the reply. As I suspected, I had taken them by surprise.
Voyage of the Southern Sun Page 22
