I looked at my phone and lay still, dazed and confused, trying to work out whether it was 8:30 at night or 8:30 in the morning. I had never slept for so long in my life, but there was no doubt I needed it.
I had a shower; although what came out of the showerhead barely existed, I am fairly sure it was water. I was very hungry, but had passed the kitchen on the way to my room and decided it would be better just to eat the muesli bars I had in my lunch box. With a few hours to waste before fuelling the aircraft I sat back and compiled another blog. Then, with backpack and sat phone at the ready, I set off for a walk.
John lived just around the corner and would be helping me refuel. Due to the nature of the island, the tiny amount of light aircraft traffic that passes through and the use-by date on aviation fuel, I had needed my own avgas shipped to Kiritimati from Hawaii by boat. John had picked up the three drums of fuel and placed them in storage until my arrival.
I found the drums of avgas in John’s warehouse; he had them loaded onto the little green truck and his two sons took me out to the Cirrus. One of the boys drove and I rode with the other in the back, both of us holding the drums steady as we bumped along the gravel roads.
Although the drums were new they were far from pristine. Each was covered in rust, not only having made the journey from Hawaii but having sat on Kiritimati waiting for my arrival. One of the first things you learn in flight training is the vital importance of having clean fuel. Any contaminants can cause rough running or even a complete engine failure. We had known what the drums at Kiritimati would probably be like and I had worked out a number of strategies for testing the fuel before filling the aircraft. I knew it would be a long process.
After checking that the drums were sealed and within the use-by date we opened the caps. I then used a large wooden stick with a water-detecting paste to test for water in the drum itself; if there was anything other than fuel in the drum the paste would change colour. So far so good. We filled the wing tanks, passing the fuel through two filters. This made the process painfully slow but a quick glance to the right gave me all the patience I needed – there was an awful lot of water out there. After the wings were full we filled the ferry tank, adding every drop of avgas from all three drums. I was becoming quite good at strapping the ferry tank down and each time I found a better place to store something. Within another half an hour we were finished.
I then spent some time with John, who showed me around the warehouse and parts of the island close to his home. I was offered some dried tuna freshly baked from the sun, which I declined, and returned to my motel room. After finishing off a few jobs I read through the flight plan for the next leg.
This would take me north to Hilo in Hawaii and directly through the inter-tropical convergence zone or ITCZ. The ITCZ is a band of bad weather that moves up and down around the equator depending on the time of year, producing thunderstorms and weather phenomena that are far from inviting. Ferry pilots had mentioned the ITCZ during the planning of the trip. They told me that sometimes it would be nonexistent, giving you a blue-sky day, but more often that not it produced amazing storms. Either way it was something to plan for and keep a keen eye on.
I walked outside and down to the beach with the satellite phone. With a little time up my sleeve I made a call to Ken to update him on progress, but really just to have a chat with a familiar voice. He was very happy with the flight so far and we spoke about a common goal: to land on the mainland of the USA, having completed both the longest leg and the longest overwater section of the entire flight.
Having successfully completed three legs I was growing used to the discipline of planning while flying. The idea was to take the flight just one leg at a time. When one leg had been completed the next leg became the focus, not the one after, just the next leg alone. Continuing with this idea, I decided to split up the entire route into six sections.
1. Crossing the Pacific Ocean – From Australia to the mainland of the United States of America
2. Crossing the United States – From the west coast to the east coast then north to Canada via the world’s biggest airshow in Wisconsin
3. Crossing the North Atlantic – From Canada to Scotland via Iceland
4. Crossing Europe – From Scotland to Greece
5. The Middle East and Asia – From Greece through to Indonesia
6. Australia – From Indonesia to the west coast of Australia and east to Wollongong
Taking this into account, I had only two legs to go before the first section to the USA mainland was completed. I knew that those after the USA would be hard and relatively risky, but peace of mind came from knowing that the flight across America would be a well earned break and much less stressful than the Pacific had been.
I packed my bags little by little, making sure that my dinner of muesli bars was left loose. I would pack a few items and then pause to step on several large ants that wandered across the floor, pack a little more only to find more ants welcoming themselves into my room. When I was finished I sat on the edge of the bed and took off my socks, now covered in ants, before spotting a small crab scuttling from door to door. What sort of place was this? And what other creatures lurked in the room, including beneath the bed? I tried to go to sleep slowly, convincing myself that nothing could scale the bed legs. If I stayed up there and my socks stayed down there I was sure I would see the next morning.
It was dark when I the alarm woke me, really dark. At around 2am I got up, dressed and prepared as well as I could, then went down to the front desk and asked whether my flight plan could be faxed through to Hawaii. But the phone lines, or rather lack thereof, would not permit that. I called San Francisco air traffic control on the satellite phone, explained who I was and that I needed to submit my flight plan. With perfect timing, the satellite phone lost reception and contact so I redialled and started again. The air traffic controllers soon worked out what was going on, and five or six phone calls later they had jotted down the details and submitted the plan.
John drove me to the airport and we said goodbye. I started up the Cirrus and taxied towards the runway, still the lone aircraft on the island. I dialled the HF radio frequency for San Francisco and made a radio call to let them know I was taxiing for takeoff. As I completed the final checks and prepared for departure, one of the controllers told me that my flight plan route had me tracking through something called a SIGMET, which meant ‘significant weather’. Today’s SIGMET was for embedded thunderstorms towering from sea level to 60,000 feet, around twice the height a domestic airliner would fly.
Before I had a chance to panic the controller offered a solution: alternative tracking that would take me to the edge of the storm, around it and onto ‘the Big Island’ of Hawaii. I asked for the alternative details and sat ready with a pen but what I received were a bunch of latitudes and longitudes from the controller’s radar, not the GPS waypoints I had been expecting. I sat at the end of the runway with the engine running and absolutely no idea how to enter latitude and longitude figures into the avionics. Could I possibly take off? The alternative, I decided, was muesli bars for dinner and being attacked by the island’s crab population. I decided I’d give it a go.
But twenty minutes later the map showed that the newly entered waypoints derived from the provided latitude and longitude figures had seemed to work, taking me nearly 100 nautical miles to the right of my original course. That was okay with me.
The airstrip ran parallel to the coast, and as soon as I was airborne I slowly banked the Cirrus to the left in order to pick up the track to Hawaii. The aircraft’s instruments were showing towering figures, it was a hot and humid thirty-two degrees Celsius outside and the engine temperature had risen significantly. I had been told from the very beginning to keep that temperature within certain limits so I lowered the nose and let the aircraft speed up. Although the climb slowed down, the engine was now receiving more air and therefore, I hoped, cooling a little.
However, the oil temperature exceeded the limit. I was extremely worried but saw no other way of cooling it down. I reached behind me and pulled out the pilot’s operating handbook, the instructions for the aircraft. I looked through to confirm the maximum temperatures in which the Cirrus could operate. The owner’s original limits set were lower than the actual maximum temperatures, a good idea for a safety buffer but not so great just then. I continued the climb to 9000 feet above the sea, knowing that as I climbed the air would become cooler and therefore bring the aircraft’s temperatures and pressures back to normal.
I sat in cruise for a little while; the skies ahead were blue and everything seemed calm as I began my list of duties. Then, as I transferred fuel and argued with the HF radio, the sky ahead turned grey. To the right there was bright blue sky, yet to the left it was as dark as night. Large grey clouds had formed at a low level, above them the weather continued into the atmosphere but rain showers hindered the view. It looked okay for now so I continued.
I soon realised the weather to the left was definitely the storm cell I had discussed with air traffic control earlier that morning. The darkness and cloud were beyond anything I had ever seen. Although the edges were crisp and definite, allowing differentiation between the storm and the clear blue sky, the centre remained a murky grey mess that gave no indication of just where I could fly in order to remain clear and therefore safe. Although the air traffic controllers had sent me nearly 200 kilo-metres to the right I was still going to fly straight through it, a massive no-no. I called San Francisco and requested to fly a further 50 nautical miles to the right, and tracked across to the right visually. Although this took me away from the centre of the storm, I soon realised there were smaller storm cells that were unavoidable unless I tracked via Mexico. The aircraft was already being shaken up and down and side-to-side; I disconnected the unhappy autopilot and weaved my way through towering cumulonimbus clouds. Each time I could see where I was going I had to decide whether to fly left or right, depending on which direction I thought would be the smoothest and where the next cell sat. It was like playing chess while trying to cross a river on stepping stones. I only took a wrong turn once, choosing left when I should have gone right, and realised the error almost immediately as the plane began shaking again.
After what seemed like days, I weaved around a storm cell to see continuous blue sky ahead. I turned and looked back to see an angry wall of storms and a very dark sky, and I could not have been happier to be heading in the direction I was. I couldn’t believe just how suddenly the weather had cleared. I took a breath and focused on the few hours left before touching down in Hawaii.
I switched from the HF radio to the standard aircraft radios when told to contact ‘Honolulu Approach’, and just prior to letting them know where I was I tuned in the ‘ATIS’ frequency. The ATIS is an automated rotational message that gives weather and airport information for your arrival. Part of the message was: ‘Caution: volcanic ash in vicinity of Hilo International airport.’
No way! How cool was that? I had never been anywhere near a volcano, let alone flown past actual volcanic ash. I was really pleased, then I decided it might be a good idea to look out for the ash itself; it was after all the last thing I needed to fly through. In the distance I could see a layer of what looked like a dark cloud, it sat at my current height and stretched out over the water where it dissipated.
I called Honolulu approach, requested descent under the ash cloud and then switched across to the Hilo control tower. As I flew towards Hilo I began to skirt the coastline. In some places the ground was a pitch-black colour with no signs of life anywhere nearby. This I gathered was dry lava; the tracks it had formed in around houses and over roads were easily visible.
I was slotted in in front of a Hawaiian Airlines jet, and just to be flying in the same airspace as a Hawaiian aircraft was exciting. I touched down in Hilo and taxied in, guided by air traffic control to Air Services Hawaii, the company looking after me during my stay. Ken, who had stopped in Hawaii with fellow pilot Tim, had told me a lot about Air Services Hawaii and my handler Shanna. It was good to know that someone who had been approved was waiting for me, but I was too focused on other things to be excited about meeting anyone.
I nosed the aircraft towards the marshal before bringing it to a stop and shutting down, sat quietly and waited for the US Customs officials to walk over to the aircraft. As Hawaii is a state of the USA I would pass through Customs here and not have to worry again until I left the US on my way to Canada. I had been told just how strict US Customs were and had seen the amount of paperwork and prior approvals involved in transiting the country. I was fairly sure I had it all, including a small hard-to-get sticker attached to the outside of the aircraft. The only problem was that half the sticker was now missing, thanks to the battering the Cirrus had taken in the storms.
The Customs guys were fine. I waved my can of insecticide, showing that I had again sprayed the cabin prior to descent – just a few sprays and not the entire can this time – and only then was I allowed to open the door. I hopped out and waved to Shanna, whom I guessed correctly was a young woman holding a lei and smiling broadly, and then waved to the gathering of welcoming media before leaning on the wing and answering the Customs questions. Once the guys knew I was not smuggling people, drugs, food of various sorts or anything else illegal, I was good to go.
I spent another half an hour chatting away to the newspaper and radio. We then packed up the aircraft and headed for the motel. My stop in Hilo was scheduled to be one of the longest because of the scheduled aircraft maintenance; the plane needed a minor service every 50 hours and a major service every 100 hours. Finding a company permitted to carry out the service while I was there had been a logistical nightmare. Any country I visited when those hours ticked over had to have an organisation permitted to legally carry out the service. But we had finally found one who would do the 50-hour inspection, which included a minor oil change.
I threw my bags on the floor of another motel, turned on the air conditioning and decided to use my skills as a sleuth to find somewhere to eat. My diet of muesli bars had become quite old and I needed real food and I couldn’t drive anywhere so it needed to be close by. A large neon sign was glowing outside my window announcing ‘Ken’s 24-hour Pancake Parlour’. This detective work was too easy. I pulled on some shorts and a shirt and wandered over to Ken’s. I was barefoot, though not by choice; my shoes were still locked inside the aircraft.
I spent the next hour breaking down the world’s longest menu. It was something I could have studied for English in high school, and not a salad or muesli bar was in sight. As I sat at the long bar on a red speckled stool, peering through the mustard and ketchup, a waitress popped over to voice her opinion about my lack of footwear. I told her I actually didn’t have any shoes and although I promised to buy some from Wal-Mart later, food was my current priority.
I eventually shuffled from the diner to hail a cab, weighed down not only with a greasy American hamburger but the guilt of eating four days’ worth of calories, including a lifetime supply of fries. I stocked up on snacks to replenish my lunchbox as well as buying some thongs. (Note to self: They are called ‘flip flops’ in the USA. Thongs are a type of underwear that I have no desire to possess.)
As usual before bed I gave a quick update of the day’s flight to the team back home. With a few days off I had time to supply a little more detail. But first I needed a good night’s sleep – and that’s exactly what I had.