Читать книгу My Heart is Africa - Scott Griffin - Страница 13
ОглавлениеTHE NIGHT was Bible-black, cold and forbidding. Sea and sky were fused into a huge, inky void. Outside my Cessna 180, the darkness held no earth, no stars, no departure point, no feeling of movement—a world suspended. Only the warm glow of the instrument lights and the throb of the engine gave hint of the plane’s small progress through the slow heartbeat of space. I was reaching into the unknown, a mere speck over the cold Atlantic. It was the first time I ever sensed vertigo.
The cockpit was crammed tight, like the inside of a space capsule, fragile and claustrophobic. My breath quickened, firing the imagination. Extrication in the event of an emergency would be impossible. Squeezed into a rubber survival suit and strapped into my seat with the doors locked, I was flying in a coffin with no means of escape. Streams of digital information curved over the Perspex windscreen: altitudes, airspeeds, nautical waypoints, reflecting my fear with split-second precision, shooting it deep into the starless night.
It was 2:10 a.m. The Newfoundland coast slipped beneath my right wing, inducing a sense of panic as I struck out over open water. I was losing my nerve. I fought for a legitimate reason to bank the plane and return to the safety of St. John’s airport. A navigational miscalculation, an operational error or misjudgment from this point forward could lead to fuel exhaustion, mechanical failure, or loss of direction, forcing me to ditch into a fearsome sea. Somehow, in spite of all the careful planning, all the preparation, I was not yet ready to penetrate the night, to fly solo over fourteen hundred miles of ocean to the Azores. How to explain this sudden loss of nerve? With every passing minute I slipped, inch by inch, farther out over the ice-cold water, deeper into a private world of fear.
The coast was my lifeline. Like a drowning man I watched the faint outline of the shore receding into darkness. It was my last chance to turn back to safety. If I pressed on, I would lose the ability to investigate a snapping cable torn loose from the controls, an insidious airlock in the fuel line, an unexpected illumination of the alternator light, sudden loss of communication, or worst of all, catastrophic engine failure. Minutes drained away, inexorably, into the night. I had an overwhelming need to rest, just for a moment, to collect myself, to take stock, before pushing forward. Demons of doubt crowded in on me. Was this not foolhardy, courting unwarranted danger? Was it fair to my wife, Krystyne, anxiously waiting for news? Should I not turn around while I was within reach of the coast? I wavered. Then suddenly, from somewhere deep inside, a certain resolve took hold and I knew that my course was set. I was committed to trying to reach the Azores, the first leg of my solo flight from Toronto to Africa, whatever the risk.
It was 1996, and I was beginning a two-year mission with the Flying Doctors Service of Africa. I had decided to fly my own plane from Toronto to Nairobi, Kenya. I knew that flying a single-engine plane solo across the Atlantic left little room for error. On the other hand, once there, flying my own plane in Africa would make the experience unforgettable. It was a calculated risk, one I felt I could manage.
St. John’s airport tower transmitted final instructions over the radio and signed off. At 5:00 a.m., two hours from the coast, I had passed beyond normal VHF (very high frequency) radio range. I tried contacting Gander via HF (high frequency) radio, a long-distance radio used for transoceanic flights, without success. Perplexed as to why I was unable to make contact, I fiddled half-heartedly with the knobs for another five minutes and then gave up. There would be time later to concentrate on communications; I needed to turn my attention to navigation.
I planned to navigate across the ocean by hand, calculating my position hourly by dead reckoning and not relying solely on the GPS (global positioning system) instrument in the unlikely event it should fail. Manual calculations involved interpreting direction and strength of the wind to determine how far the plane would be blown off course. Gander provided St. John’s with detailed forecasts of upper winds, which were printed for pilots an hour prior to departure. In daylight, wind force and direction were verifiable by sighting the size and angle of the waves relative to the plane’s heading; at night, one had to rely on forecasts. In addition, hourly course adjustments were necessary, based on magnetic variation. I dutifully recorded my calculations and the GPS instrument times and positions on my aviation map, comparing the two: they were remarkably close over the first five hours.
I had virtually no room in the cockpit. Behind the front seat the large spare tank known as a ferry tank held 120 gallons of extra fuel, leaving almost no space for storing gear. The co-pilot’s seat held the life raft on top of which was the HF radio. The fuel pump for the ferry tank occupied the floor of the cockpit. Where to store the flashlight, the emergency flares, the fresh-water container, the EPIRB (emergency position indicating radio beacon), the hand-held radio, and the thermos? More importantly, I needed space for the navigational charts, plotting charts, calculator, protractor, ruler, pencils, along with reference lists for HF radio frequencies, reporting positions and ETA (estimated time of arrival) calculations; the Jeppeson flight supplement; approach plates; emergency reading glasses. They all had to be within immediate reach. Having no autopilot, wing leveller, or co-pilot meant that I could not just abandon the controls to search for some vital piece of equipment or information.
Three hours and twenty minutes out of St. John’s I encountered my first serious problem. I was flying through thick cloud with no visibility outside the cockpit, not a star nor horizon to rely on. Flashes of light reflected off the murk of cloud from the plane’s navigation lights. The engine rumbled over a range of harmonics as the plane laboured through increasing turbulence. Suddenly, the LED (light-emitting diode) of my number-one radio blanked out. Presumably, the radio still worked, but it was utterly useless if I could not read the frequency numbers. LEDS are illuminated by gasemitting diodes, normally reliable. This was an unexpected development, hard to fathom. Particularly worrisome was the prospect of having to rely on my number-two radio, a twenty-three-year-old vintage Cessna 120 model. Its limited range was useful around airports only. My HF radio, of course, was designed for transoceanic radio communications over long distances, but it had not worked since I left St. John’s. The prospect of having to rely on a hand-held emergency radio of limited range all the way to the Azores was unnerving.
Should I turn back or continue flying for another eleven hours, unable to communicate? St. John’s would assume I was proceeding across the ocean with all equipment functioning, since I had left their control zone. Gander, on the other hand, handled all trans-Atlantic flights; they would be waiting for me to establish contact.
I remembered reading in an avionics journal that diodes were affected by pressure changes; perhaps it was worth changing altitude. I descended from eleven thousand feet to nine thousand feet, noting the last frequency on my plotting chart before turning my attention back to the HF radio.
The HF radio raised different questions. Were the HF receiver and antenna system incorrectly installed, or was the problem caused by my inability to manipulate the latest interlocking features of the Kenwood receiver? I felt like a novice facing the complexities of a computer for the first time—only I was flying an airplane, at night, over water, with no reference points or horizon. Five hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland, unable to raise Gander, Halifax, or any other station, I had to concede that if I continued on to the Azores it would be without communication with the outside world.
Thickening banks of cumulus cloud reduced all visibility to the wing tips. Turbulence increased from light to moderate. Flying became more difficult, requiring my full concentration. The GPS instrument silently recorded an accumulating bank of nautical miles off the North American continent. I had become a tiny speck inching farther and farther out over the Atlantic, alone and vulnerable.
Still, I had faith in my plane and ultimately in my own ability to reach the Azores and then Africa. It was blind faith, perhaps, but enough to hold me on course. Surely, I mused, the idea of faith was blind, more akin to instinct, and subtle in that respect. Faith in God, faith in yourself; you either possessed it or you did not. For me it provided comfort. Not that I could ask God to look after me, only that He not abandon me. The parable of the lost sheep was intriguing: the lamb never alone in its lost-ness was infinitely more reassuring than the lamb rescued. Faith embodied so much more than fate. I knew God’s mercy paid no heed to merit, had no court of justice. And I never thought of God as determining the outcome of my flight. There was more to it than that. Faith provided the strength to endure, to survive the consequences, whatever they might be. Faith kept me flying with hope, and hope knew no boundaries.
Suddenly, without warning, the sky cleared. The planet Jupiter hung under the soft light of a lambent moon. My spirits lifted and, flying into a star-filled night, I rejoiced at my refusal to turn back. The Milky Way spread across the sky like a jewelled carpet reflecting a path over the silver ocean. First-magnitude stars wheeled on their prescribed passages across the firmament, like a giant clock recording the slow passing of the night. How many navigators, I wondered, over how many centuries, had put their faith on sightings from these selfsame stars? Ancient seafarers, desert nomads, Arctic explorers, even modern-day astronauts all relied upon these heavenly waypoints. The celestial chart, a construction of the first order, exquisitely beautiful, mathematically precise, utterly divine, held for me the reconciliation of faith and the secular world of science.
The LED display on my number-one VHF radio flickered and came alive again, filling the cockpit with its orange glow—the change in altitude worked. VHF (very high frequency) radio operates on line of sight and with the curvature of the earth its range is limited, while HF (high frequency) radio waves bounce off the ionosphere and their range is virtually unlimited, although the signal degrades with distance and atmospheric interference. So, while I remained without communication with a defective or inoperable HF at least within range of the Azores, I would be able to transmit and receive on my VHF radio. I offered a silent prayer of thanks, eased the plane back to my assigned altitude of eleven thousand feet, and willed the LED numbers to hold firm.
It was now five-thirty in the morning, three and a half hours into the flight, time to switch to the left tank and to start pumping reserve fuel from the ferry tank behind my seat up to the starboard wing. As I turned on the electric fuel pump, eyes glued to the fuel gauges, I thought of Dave McDevitt, my mechanic in Toronto. Dave had helped me prepare for the trip; it was his installation—this was his moment. He was probably asleep, no doubt confident that his workmanship could be relied upon. Sure enough, as if his thick, stubby fingers were pushing the fuel gauges, the needles crawled up to the full mark. The wing tanks would require two more replenishments before I reached the Azores. Dave’s insistence that “fuel and engine— them’s the only things that count out there” reverberated through my mind like a mantra.
Dawn broke, spilling light under my port wing. A sleepy grey sky drew a veil of cirrus cloud across the promise of morning. The last shades of night slipped over the plane’s tail and my spirits rose. At that moment, I could think of nowhere else I’d rather be than alone in the cockpit, hundreds of miles out over the Atlantic, within range of the Azores, reaching for Africa. I poured myself a cup of coffee and watched the sun inch over the razor-thin horizon, cutting sea and sky, ten thousand feet below. I never felt more alive.
It was the first time since leaving St. John’s in the dark that I felt in control of my destiny, reassured by my decision to fly to Africa; a moment of calm, to reflect on why I was here, midway across the Atlantic, flying solo in a single-engine plane.
For years I had been caught up in the business and personal ambitions of life in Toronto. Toronto was like that: money, career, power, and who you knew; it all seemed so important. I was never really interested or particularly successful in making money, in spite of repeated efforts to set some aside, enough to be independent. I was president of a small public company, well paid and secure. By 1995, though, the company, Meridian Technologies Inc., had grown in size and prospects, with two large international shareholders struggling to gain control. This eventually led to a boardroom tussle, which I lost. Although proper financial arrangements were provided, it was a painful ouster, with a sudden withdrawal of support from those on whom I thought I could count. In December 1995, I was out of a job, and from this low point the faint murmurings of Africa beckoned.
I had always been intrigued by the idea of Africa. Africa conjured up all that was fundamental, raw, and powerful with a deep undercurrent of mystery. The heavy beat of dark African nights suggested incarnate desire, danger, and fear. Africa was part of my romantic inventory. I had visited it once earlier in my life and I always said I would return: now was the time.
Still, there was more to it really than just revisiting Africa. I was well along in my business career and yet I remained restless. For years, I had dreamed of breaking away from business into something completely different—combining adventure with an altruistic pursuit in an underdeveloped country. But somehow life had held me prisoner in a world too comfortable. I aspired for something nobler, something more than just making money; something was tugging at my soul. Was it a mid-life crisis or was it an honourable escape from the reality of a world I knew? Hard to say, but for the first time in many years a challenge lay squarely in front of me. While I could hardly afford a sabbatical, I was free of domestic responsibilities— my three children from a first marriage were grown up, and my fourth, a daughter, was at Concordia University, Montreal. If ever I was going to realize the dream of breaking away from a business career, it was now.
I had contacted a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOS): Action Aid, CARE, Médecins Sans Frontières, and World Vision, but they were understandably focused in their desire to enlist employees with specific skills, none of which I possessed. They had no room for a retired president from the business world.
Luckily, I stumbled upon the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), an African-based organization with headquarters in Nairobi, which owned and ran the Flying Doctors Service of East Africa. Their work seemed like a noble cause; more importantly, they needed someone to help reorganize their small entrepreneurial Flying Doctors Service division into a more stable self-sustaining organization and they felt I had the requisite skills.
By chance, the director general of AMREF, Dr. Michael Gerber, had arrived in Toronto in September 1996. We met over breakfast and hit it off immediately. He said he could use my help, but the Flying Doctors Service could not afford to pay me a salary, although out-of-pocket expenses would be covered. I was familiar enough with charitable organizations to understand this, so I signed up for two years. I informed him that I would fly my single-engine plane to Nairobi, arriving in Kenya in approximately a month’s time. He agreed that having a plane would provide enormous opportunities to explore East Africa, but he expressed concern at my proposal to fly there alone.
Later that day my wife and I walked through the neighbourhood park together. Krystyne was supportive—even sympathetic— to pulling up stakes and spending two years in Nairobi, providing she did not have to fly the Atlantic with me. She was giving up more than I was. Her life was in order and she was content. She had a successful career as a fashion-design consultant and here was I suggesting we leave our comfortable Toronto life of the last twenty years for what could easily be a dead end. In our late fifties we were no longer youngsters, and we had no pensions. Was this a wise move? I shall never forget that day: walking in silence along the edge of the ravine, hand in hand, minds racing; a soft drizzle falling into the fading light of a September afternoon. The first hint of autumn had thrown a chill into the air. Doubts crowded in on the muted promise of adventure. Was the excitement of Africa sufficiently strong to make us overthrow our lives in Toronto? I glanced at her, smiling, as her hand tightened on mine, and with that it was decided.
Seven hours into the flight and the engine gauges were holding in the green. Daylight had ushered in a sense of confidence. The cockpit had expanded into the wider world of morning light; the dove-grey sea lay calm under a thin veil of cirrus over a milky sky. There was no human sign within sight and no sound apart from the vibrating drone of the motor.
Suddenly, to my amazement, I heard a voice come over the VHF emergency frequency 121.5. It was Jerry Childers, a professional pilot I’d met in St. John’s the night before my departure. He was flying a plane that was sixty knots faster than mine and, although he had left three hours later, he was now overtaking me. While it was comforting to have another soul somewhere out there in that endless reach of sea and sky, given his speed, our radio link would not last more than two hours. So my only contact with the outside world was now through Jerry, who relayed my position back to Gander, indicating that my HF radio was defective.
Jerry and his partner were in an old twin-engine Nordo that had no air pressurization and no heat, which made flying at fifteen thousand feet uncomfortable—but they needed the altitude to maximize fuel efficiency and to maintain speed. Their discomfort was compensated by less flying time to the Azores. It was November and they wanted to make a quick crossing; the weather was holding, but at that time of year it would not last long.
The hours slipped through the day. Gradually, the sky darkened into threatening weather. Waves of incoming cloud gathered into soft, undulating swirls of grey wool, masking the white-tipped waves below. Soon, a thicker blanket of stratus, charcoal and ominous, drew nearer. Off in the distance, a reef of cirrus cloud imprisoned a band of yellow sky. The afternoon slid into premature evening, the precursor of an approaching storm. Enormous cumulonimbus clouds, heavy with moisture, induced a light skimming of rime ice that slowly accumulated on the leading edges of the propeller and wings. The sky coiled in on itself with increasing intensity. Sudden spectacular flashes of lightning illuminated the outside markings of the fuselage. Unrelenting rain beat against the windscreen.
I radioed Jerry requesting that he seek Gander’s permission for me to fly at a higher altitude, so that I could rise above the bad weather. “Don’t wait for permission, go up,” he volunteered useful but unnecessary advice. I struggled to gain altitude above thirteen thousand feet; however, the extra weight of fuel and the rapid accumulation of ice on the fuselage were dragging me down. In addition, the engine repeatedly misfired, indicating icing in the carburetor. Turbulence made holding a course, even controlling the plane, increasingly difficult. The thought of Jerry riding above the weather while I was doomed to penetrate the brunt of the storm had me envious. I would have gladly sacrificed heat for altitude.
“Jerry, I can’t get higher. I need to go lower to melt the ice off the airframe.” Turbulence made it difficult even to hold the transmit button of the radio.
“You’re breaking up, I can’t read you,” was all I got from Jerry; the rest was garbled. Descending at a thousand feet a minute, I lost radio contact. I was back on my own.
The next hour required my full concentration to hold a steady course. Turbulence increased from moderate to severe; I cinched the seat belt and shoulder strap tight across my chest. Sudden vicious jolts to the plane were so violent I could no longer turn the dials of the radio or navigational instruments for fear of snapping the knobs off the panel. The instrument gauges spiked up and down in a crazy manner, rendering me nauseous. Any semblance of order in the cockpit vanished. Loose gear shifted out of position and catapulted about the cabin as if possessed.
Unable to communicate, alone in the dark, I realized that I might be forced to ditch. Could the plane withstand the stress of such relentless pounding? I had visions of a wing tearing free of the fuselage, the plane in a sickening stall, tripping over into a spin, and then plunging through the darkness into the roaring maw of the sea below. Amazingly, I viewed the prospect with calm, knowing there was little I could do beyond trying to steer with the pedals while leaving the ailerons free to find their own equilibrium.
I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of regret over my cavalier parting with Krystyne; we had not said a proper goodbye. Leaving Toronto in a blush of self-confidence and eager to get started on my flight to Africa, I had thought it a bad omen to dwell on the possibility of ditching, wrong to invite the unthinkable.
Lightning flashed incandescent through cloud, each electrical discharge spraying the storm-scope with a myriad of small crosses. There was a sudden, shocking, pistol-like report. A lightning strike slammed into the cockpit, knocking out the ADF (automatic direction finding) instrument and firing the cockpit with an acrid smell of burnt electronics. A thin curl of blue smoke rose from under the instrument panel to settle beneath the concave hood of the windscreen. I was more surprised than frightened. The storm’s ferocity seemed out of proportion to the neatly defined cold front recorded on Gander’s seven-hundred-millibar weather chart prepared nine hours earlier. High over the Atlantic those same small, thinly spaced isobars had translated themselves into forces of nature that threatened to pull me down into a raging ocean with little chance of survival.
I descended to an altitude of four thousand feet, searching for higher temperatures that would herald the melting point. A thick accumulation of ice on the plane gradually turned soft and began to run. Large chunks of ice, thrown by the prop, struck the fuselage with a terrifying noise, like the spray of machine-gun bullets. The warmer temperatures drove sheets of rain onto the plane, so thick I thought the engine air intake might choke with water. The windshield became a river, like being trapped in the underside of a waterfall.
I had passed the point of no return with not enough fuel to make it back to Newfoundland. I was committed to reaching the Azores or ditching into the Atlantic. Proper navigation had now given way to mere survival. I needed to punch through the cold front, ride out the turbulence while trying to maintain control of the airplane. In the meantime the satellite-directed GPS instrument continued faithfully to record my progress from North America, seemingly unperturbed by the surrounding chaos. I was ten degrees to the left of my course, three hours away from the Azores.
My shoulders ached. I longed for relief. The relentless struggle to control the plane had become a series of linked crises. It was important to maintain a light touch on the controls, since I feared the cables might snap under the stress of increasing turbulence. Technically, there comes a point when it is better to give the plane its “head,” minimize corrections, and fly with the rudder pedals only. The plane pitched and climbed in such an erratic manner I feared I might involuntarily enter a high-speed stall. I battled on, thrown sideways, rolling first onto one wing and then violently back onto the other, nerves on edge, hoping, praying for a change in the weather.
Three-quarters of an hour later I broke into still air and an unreal calm took hold. Suddenly, it was as if I were suspended, floating through space, like some orbiting planet. Only the drone of the engine gave a hint of movement. The first peeping stars and a threequarter moon emerged from the remaining wisps of cloud—the storm’s spent traces departing gracefully like the beat of angels’ wings.
Too tired to sort out the mess in the cockpit I simply sat there staring at the instruments, relishing the calm as the last of the day tumbled into darkness. A sense of peace descended over my small world. The familiarity of my surroundings, the instruments, the competent sounds of the motor, even the rush of wind through the fuselage provided me with a renewed sense of confidence. I was comfortable in my plane, having flown her thousands of miles; I knew her idiosyncrasies by heart and by instinct, which manoeuvres she could handle, the safe limits of her performance. And she almost certainly knew my personal flying characteristics both good and bad. There was a bond that had us relying one upon the other.
My heart leapt as I sighted, far in the distance, tiny pinpricks of light. It was certain to be Flores, the first of the small islands of the Azores. I had only three hundred miles to go before reaching the most eastward island, Santa Maria. I marvelled that body, soul, and engine, flying non-stop thirteen and a half hours over the vast expanse of ocean through mixed weather, had found these small islands in the middle of the Atlantic. Weariness overwhelmed me; still, I could rejoice. I had completed the first leg of a seven-thousand-mile flight to Africa. The relief was palpable.
Santa Maria coordinates: latitude, north 36 degrees, 58 minutes, 04 seconds; longitude, west 025 degrees, 10 minutes, 03 seconds—how could I ever forget them? Pilots for over fifty years had concentrated their wits and physical endurance on this waypoint, the refuelling crossroads for piston-engine airplanes crossing the Atlantic: America to Europe, Europe to South America, and vice versa. For the first half of the twentieth century, this remote little group of volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic grew in importance along with the expansion of air travel. No other refuelling stop lay within a thousand miles. Not until the arrival of the jet engine in the 1950s and the introduction of non-stop transatlantic flights did the Azores lose their strategic importance.
Having landed at Santa Maria, I walked over to the airport office to clear customs and pay landing fees. The captain sitting behind an old-fashioned oak desk, chin resting on a hammock of laced fingers, looked dignified and intelligent. He read my papers and then twisted the ends of his moustache. “We don’t see many planes coming through here any more,” he said, thoughtfully, in perfect English. His ice-blue eyes, fine features, and quiet demeanour gave him a natural air of authority. “May I buy you a drink?” he added, closing his desk drawer, pushing back the chair, and rising to his feet. My arrival had coincided with the end of his workday. I hesitated, surprised at the unexpectedly generous offer. “Perhaps you are tired and wish to retire.”
“No, it would be a pleasure,” I replied, “but first I should register at the hotel and wash up.”
“Yes, of course, you have had a long flight. I’ll wait for you downstairs in the bar. Please, take your time. No hurry.”
I had met Captain Helder Fernando da Silva Borges Pimental, head of airport operations. His career was bound to the Santa Maria airport, as controller, immigration officer, and now captain of operations. Over the years he had seen many pilots pass through theAzores.
After I checked into the hotel and washed up I wandered down to the bar to find Helder crouched over a whisky. I joined him, ordered a beer, and asked him to tell me about flying into the Azores. He related the story of Clarke Wood—everyone called him Woody—a great pilot. Woody was an American, a professional ferry pilot, transporting other people’s planes across the Atlantic for a living—a risky business. He had gone down two hundred miles off the Azores in a Lake Amphibian nine months before. It had been a wild night, and the waves were twenty feet high: no chance in that kind of sea. Helder was the controller on duty when Woody radioed through that he was having engine problems and that he could not maintain altitude. That was at 18:00 hours. Then mysteriously, the engine settled and Woody indicated that operations were back to normal. Could it have been carburetor icing? Twenty minutes later, the trouble recurred and this time he had to ditch. He radioed his latitude and longitude and then silence.
I shuddered. Sad to think of Woody hanging on out there in the middle of the night, hoping to beat the odds. Helder told me he had sent two planes out to look for him, hoping to see a light near his reported position, but it was a storm-swept night, pitch black— making rescue impossible. In the morning, reconnaissance planes sighted the ferry tanks floating just below the surface, and bits of wreckage scattered near his reported position. No sign of Woody. There was no doubt in Helder’s mind that Woody had died in the crash. A Lake Amphibian with all that fuel and the engine mounted above the fuselage is a tough airplane to glide into a stormy sea. He probably didn’t even see the water before he struck the first wave, like hitting cement.
One drink and my head was swimming. I needed sleep. Helder insisted we meet again, the next day. I agreed, said good-night, and stumbled towards my hotel room. I placed a call to Krystyne who sounded relieved to hear my voice, though she seemed distant— on the far side of a dream. I told her the remainder of my flight to Africa was without danger, but her instincts said otherwise, and so our thoughts remained hanging. Minutes later, I fell into sleep and immediately began to climb through cloud, rudder and ailerons guiding me through a tangle of dreams.
Dawn broke, uncertain, through a pearl haze of light. A twenty-knot wind funnelled down Santa Maria Runway 36. The tarmac stretched three thousand feet to the north, ending abruptly in a fifty-foot cliff overlooking a cobalt sea. The plane’s nose pointed upwards, ready for takeoff, the engine idling, the two-bladed prop describing a blurred arc against a worried sky. A sweep of clouds raced before the north wind.
I had tried for an earlier start, but the hotel was empty and the old night watchman’s eyesight was unable to handle the checkout. In future I vowed to settle accounts the evening before departure. Helder had found me a technician to help repair my HF transoceanic radio—a functioning HF radio was absolutely mandatory flying into Europe. It turned out that there was a hairline break in the antenna lead where it joined the HF receiver. The repair was simple. A further delay was caused by the chaotic state of the cockpit from the previous flight and the struggle to squeeze into my oversized rubber survival suit. I was now two hours behind schedule. Mine was the only airplane on the island, and yet the clearance seemed to take forever.
Flying over open water in daylight was a good deal more comforting than the 3:00 a.m. plunge into darkness off the coast of Newfoundland. Although my departure was delayed, I estimated arrival in Lisbon, Portugal, before nightfall. A light tailwind was forecast to last the day and then gradually dissipate near the European coast. I expected a trouble-free flight.
Navigating the second half of the flight across the Atlantic, from the Azores to Portugal, was considered easy compared to flying from St. John’s to Santa Maria. Unlike the first leg, navigating to small islands in the middle of the ocean, all one had to do was maintain an easterly heading and you were bound to land somewhere in Europe. Nevertheless, eight hundred miles of ocean and nine hours of flying to Portugal are not to be taken lightly; anything can happen and usually does flying an airplane. The radio airwaves would be thick with North American flights arriving in Europe, as pilots reported positions to the oceanic controllers whose job it was to coordinate hundreds of airliners crossing the Atlantic twice daily. I would be slotted into the traffic at a lower altitude.
Ten miles out from Santa Maria the controller’s voice came over the HF radio—a distinctive HF burble, as if the sound was passing through a tube under water. I exulted in my good fortune at having befriended Helder. My plane, with the call sign CF-WMJ (Charlie Foxtrot Whisky Mike Juliet), was trimmed for a long, slow climb, managing only two hundred feet altitude per minute with the extra weight of fuel and gear. Flying at a thousand pounds over gross legal weight meant I had to keep a close eye on the manifold and oil temperatures and manoeuvre gently until the first two or three hours of fuel had burned away.
Hours passed without incident. Imperceptible changes in the weather, in line with the forecast, drew thin wisps of cloud across the sky with the occasional non-threatening rain showers between the shafts of sunlight reflecting off the waves below. Operating routines were, by now, familiar: pumping fuel up to the wing tanks, plotting dead-reckoning positions, communicating with the controllers, calculating speed, drift, and estimated time of arrival.
Six hours into the flight the first loom of landfall came within sight: the European coastline. Transoceanic control transferred me over to the Portuguese traffic controllers responsible for merging streams of air traffic into the country’s major airports. Clipped voices relayed instructions in rapid bursts over the radio. The mix of nationalities speaking English—the international language of aviation—required professional radio procedure and military-like execution of instructions.
The weather deteriorated rapidly as I approached the coast. Late-afternoon convective activity over the warm land swelled into a solid mass of cloud, embedded with thunderstorms. Controllers tried to accommodate repeated requests from commercial airlines to divert around bad weather. At my lower altitude I had no choice but to fly through thick cloud and turbulence. The ferry tank occasionally expanded with the change in air pressure, making a loud bang. It was unnerving. Each time, I thought I had lost part of the plane’s fuselage.
Rain streamed over the windscreen and pummelled the plane, increasing the noise level in the cabin. Turbulence made hand flying increasingly difficult. Commercial airliners at the higher altitudes were also finding it uncomfortable, judging by the number of diversions requested of controllers. Bad flying weather was solid up to thirty thousand feet, far beyond my plane’s climbing capability.
I was vectored into a five-minute holding position while a number of jumbo jets were slotted into final approach for Lisbon International Airport. I sensed the controller was having difficulty finding enough space to accommodate my slower speed. Flying IFR (instrument flight rules), in a holding pattern with no visibility, after nine hours over the ocean seemed unreasonable. I was on the verge of complaining when I received my instructions to pick up the localizer and hold the centre line of the runway; then execute an instrument landing onto Runway 21.
I touched down and, to my amazement, found no response in the left brake. My plane, a tail dragger, can be steered on the ground only by using the brakes. Swerving farther and farther off the runway I fought to maintain directional control, without success. The plane barely avoided a ground loop, hit a grass bank, and slid down a gentle incline to the right of the runway into a flaming carpet of wild poppies.
Recovering, I immediately realized the oversized rubber foot of my survival suit had wedged itself under the brake pedal, rendering it inoperative. Somewhat sheepishly, I applied maximum power and managed to re-enter the runway under the urgent instructions of the controller to proceed immediately to the taxiway in order to make way for a Boeing 747 on final approach.
I was worn thin with exhaustion. Plans to tour the old city of Lisbon faded as I made for the nearest hotel. The smoke-filled warmth of a crowded restaurant had me aching for sleep. Still, I could enjoy the taste of triumph. After all, I had crossed the Atlantic. Now Africa was within reach.
