It took me three attempts though. I used pretty much the same team throughout, including Gavin Hailes to launch the balloon and relying on the meteorological advice of the Belgian Luc Trullemans, who I really believe is the very best in the world at what he does. I’d first met Luc through Brian Jones back in 2000 when I was planning my trip to the North Pole, and he’s rather famous back home in Belgium as a handsome TV weather presenter who all the girls seem to love. I was also doing things relatively on the cheap, as I was using the same envelope, basket and burners as I had on my flight to the North Pole, but I was a little worried about any damage the balloon might have sustained on my previous trip so decided that I would start from Pittsburgh in the Midwest. If anything went wrong early on I far preferred the idea of still being over land, rather than having to ditch in the open ocean and the balloon (and quite possibly myself) being lost at sea.
So in early September 2002 we pitched up at a little airport, Allegheny County, with its art deco tower. It was a place just used by small jets and private pilots, and a guy called Steve Phillips lent us his hanger where we could get everything ready. We had full tanks of gas and were prepared just to sit around for the right weather, but within four days Luc reported we had the perfect slot ahead of us, and even though I was barely over my jet lag we said let’s take it. As always they started to inflate the envelope in early evening and at 10.00 p.m. I took off into the darkness. It was a slightly surreal experience, and very unlike the 24-hour sunshine I’d had on my way to the North Pole, flying in virtual silence apart from the occasional puff of the burner and the constant chatter of air traffic control. Now I could see the lights of Pittsburgh and its surroundings spread out below me as I flew at about 8,000 feet above them.
I had an autopilot system which works on barometric pressure. This obviously can’t alter your direction, but is designed to maintain the exact height you want for the weather pattern that will take you in the direction you plan, as wind speeds and even direction can be very different at varying altitudes. This only works on a downward cycle, as there is no way for it to let gas out of the balloon (and nor would you want it to), but it will just gently puff as required to keep you at the right level. It’s a very clever system since it learns as it goes along, pushing you up a little too high the first few times and then settling down to exactly the right amount of burn, picking up changes in your height far earlier and more exactly than a pilot could do themselves.
In the morning, when the sun heats the gas in the balloon, it has no control, so you have two choices about times to choose for catnapping. Either you can do so with the autopilot operating, although this can obviously be dangerous since if it failed whilst you were asleep you might come down and crash before you woke up, or you can do so when you know the balloon is slowly rising, but then you have the opposite threat that you don’t know when it will stop and without an oxygen mask you could easily die of hypoxia in your sleep. I would usually try to grab a few hours’ sleep in the early morning, just when there would be a bit of gentle lift, but there was too much going on up the East Coast for me to do so now with the ATC of Pittsburgh, Newark, La Guardia and Boston to deal with. It also seemed that all the pilots wanted to speak with me, but although the skies were very busy the Americans are generally pretty good at giving you clear air space, ensuring nothing comes within a mile or so of you.
After my first night tracking up the east coast it was clear that the autopilot wasn’t working properly. I already felt very tired, and talking to the guys back in the control room in Bath they said it would be stupid to set off across the ocean. The only sensible decision was to fly through the night and then find somewhere to land at first light, so at once I had to switch from trying to maintain a maximum speed and direction east to moving as slowly as possible and keeping away from the coast. When first light came and the sun rose it was a beautiful morning. At 5.30 a.m. I was tracking north-east over New Hampshire, with the trees below just beginning to turn into their early autumn colours, but I couldn’t see anywhere to land, no fields at all.
In the distance I could hear a siren, getting closer and closer. I was flying at roughly 100 feet and moving at about 10 knots, prepared to put the balloon down into any open space I could find. I rolled up the sides of the basket and got the trail rope ready for landing. I also pulled in from below the dipole and transponder antenna, since the last thing you want to happen is have those get tangled in any electric wires as you could very easily be electrocuted. I’d changed over the propane tanks to ensure I was on a new one, which you always do to make sure you don’t run out of fuel just at the critical moment you are coming in to land. Now I was flying virtually as if I was just in a hot-air balloon. Everything was stowed away. The sirens now seemed to be approaching from the opposite direction, and looking over the side I could see two cop cars, an ambulance and two fire engines. Back and forth they went. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Dave Owen back in Bath. ‘They’re chasing you, you twit,’ he replied. Unlike me, they couldn’t travel in a straight line and had to follow the small country roads.
Eventually I found a field and thought I would bang it down there. One technique people sometimes use when landing a balloon is to hit the top of a tree to take out the speed, remove the momentum. This was great in theory, but not something I’d ever actually done before. I smacked the top of this big tree, and just stuck in it, suspended and swaying disturbingly, the field I’d been aiming at just the other side of me. Pretty soon the emergency services rolled up, and were rapidly joined by a satellite tv truck. The firemen got out their ladders and one climbed up to ask me if I wanted a lift down. I said no way and climbed down the tree, to be met at the bottom by a reporter. ‘Is anything hurt?’ he asked. ‘Only my pride,’ I replied. Pretty soon there was a fairly large crowd of people there, and then this little old lady pushed her way through with a cup of tea for me. This turned out actually to be Steve Phillips’ mum, and it transpired I had come down right by where she lived. A couple of hours later Steve himself turned up with the trailer. We got the balloon out of the tree by chopping it down, packed everything up and took it back to Pittsburgh, where we stored everything in the hanger for next year.
We were back at the beginning of June the following year, 2003, because I felt I wanted to be there at a time when the hours of daylight were longer. We’d had all our debriefs and thought we’d solved the problem with the autopilot, but we didn’t really change much else. We’d returned to the same little airport, although this time we planned to take the balloon down into a valley to give it a little more protection from the wind for actual lift-off. Although I was no longer concerned about the general condition of the balloon I was obviously very anxious about the autopilot and whether or not it would work properly.
We’d received some sponsorship from Krispy Kreme Donuts and as part of the deal they sent us a large box of their wares every day. This was great the first morning when we all tucked in and scoffed about five each. On day two this probably dropped to three, then one, and after that we couldn’t stand the thought of even looking at any again. We ended up giving them all away. The donuts were doing my waistline no good, and it looked as if we would have a lot of sitting around to do.
This time we seemed to have no sort of luck with the weather at all. Whenever it appeared that I might have a great track heading out east, that always coincided with big thunder storms that would be waiting for me over the ocean just off the coast, which I suppose shouldn’t have been a great surprise as these are always going to be more likely in high summer. At one point it looked as if we’d found a great track and had got so far as filing our flight path, when a guy came over from the FAA office over the road accompanied by a sheriff. Apparently my proposed path would have taken me directly over Camp David, and I was informed in no uncertain terms that even if the President was not in residence at the time I would be shot down if I attempted flying overhead. Clearly I wasn’t going to risk that, but I still had to sign t
his piece of paper acknowledging what I’d been told.
Finally towards the end of June it looked as if our luck had finally turned and I was able to set off. I was tracking out north-east and getting up towards Hartford, feeling much more confident this time, when Luc came on the radio. The weather had unexpectedly gone to shit out over the Atlantic and the wind would now take me up across Greenland and Iceland, so there was no alternative other than to land. Once again I had to switch from trying to find the fastest path to getting on the slowest possible one.
Just outside Boston I found a big field and pulled off the best landing I’ve ever made by a country mile. It was 5.30 a.m. and I just kissed the ground, stood the balloon up and let the gas out. A farmer came out to say good morning, closely followed by his daughter dressed still in her night clothes. When they invited me in for breakfast I jumped out like a shot, nearly losing my balloon which made an attempt to take off again without me. Having been picked up and brought back to Pittsburgh, I realized this clearly wasn’t working and beginning to get ridiculous, as we were waiting in vain for the rare combination of two completely different weather systems, one to track me up north along the coast and then another to take me out east over the Atlantic.
So over a beer on our return to Pittsburgh, we decided that we would set up base a lot further north and east, at Sussex near St John in New Brunswick, Canada, from where, when the right weather pattern arrived, I could go straight out over the ocean. The two previous aborted attempts had at least given me more time in and made me feel more comfortable with the balloon, and I felt confident that everything should work—otherwise I’d be taking a swim, but that rather goes with the territory. If you are setting out to cross the Atlantic in a balloon there is always the prospect that you might have to ditch, but you simply have to be prepared for that eventuality.
We went straight up there in early July of the same year and established home in a small hotel and an office that had been set up for us by Lorne White who was then teaching me to fly fixed-wing aircraft. He’s someone I miss a lot, since he died just afterwards on a flight in Africa. We had the helium tanker that had needed to travel all the way from Toronto, and Bert Padelt and Tim Cole came up. Then it soon turned into Groundhog Day. It’s not as if there’s a great deal to do in the area, and each morning would start with a breakfast of blueberry muffins, cappuccino and orange juice, which we always bought from the same place and bizarrely cost a different amount every day, so they were clearly just making it up. That was then followed by a lot of sitting around. Everything was ready to go but the weather just wouldn’t come right, and as it got later into the season and began to get colder I was starting to think we might miss out again.
Then finally, in the last week of September, Luc said ‘you’re off’. There was no messing around and I took off late at night and headed out straight over the ocean. I was dressed in my immersion suit and wearing a parachute initially, and this time everything seemed very different. Unlike over the US there was very little air traffic control to worry about, and I had what seemed like an excellent track over Newfoundland and then the Atlantic. Early on it seemed as if I would be taking a very northerly path that would eventually see me end up in Lithuania, if I actually got that far, but then the wind direction changed and brought me further south.
I was about three days into the flight, maybe 500 miles out of Ireland and sitting there enjoying a lovely day at about 14,000 feet, when all of a sudden the basket just dropped twenty feet. Christ, I thought, has a flying wire snapped or the flap come away from the top the balloon? My knees were really wobbling, and I got my life jacket and everything else ready in case I genuinely was coming down, before I put through a call to the control room. We simply could not work out what had happened for ages, but eventually from checking the flight schedules the guys concluded that I’d just been hit by the sonic wave from Concorde, breaking the sound barrier as it came out of the UK. I’d heard absolutely nothing, but my god I felt it.
Later that evening, and still several hundred miles short of the Emerald Isle and what would technically complete my Atlantic crossing, I was moving through thick cloud. I could see long icicles forming around the mouth at the bottom of the balloon’s envelope, and I knew this was seriously bad news. If you can see ice there, then you could be damn sure there would be a whole lot more inside and at the top, formed by moisture condensed from the water in the air by the propane burner. The autopilot was working very hard, firing the burner almost full-time to maintain my altitude, and it was pitch black. My variometer which stated my height had an alarm fitted, and suddenly it went off with a shrill warning. I was starting to come down fast, perhaps at 500 feet a minute, all due to the extra weight the ice had added to my balloon.
The burner seemed to be doing nothing to compensate for my fall and there was only one thing to do. Luckily I was still well short of land so I was able to cut away six tanks of gas which dropped into the sea below. I couldn’t see anything beneath me, and it did cross my mind for a moment that should I be unfortunate enough to pick out a fishing boat with my aerial bombardment I could end up facing a murder charge, but I really had no alternative. Losing the weight of those tanks stopped my descent, but I’d fallen to about 5,000 feet which also changed my direction as I’d found a different wind pattern. Over the next couple of hours I was crouched there with my helmet on, as the melting ice kept coming down in sheets, chunks bouncing off and around me, and I was standing in the basket ankle-deep in slush.
When I finally hit the coast over the Dingle Peninsula the Irish ATC came on the radio and said ‘Welcome to Ireland’. It was time to start thinking about where I might finally land and I had various alternatives in mind. Although I’d originally been intending to end up in Europe I knew that having lost so much gas I would never be able to cross the North Sea, so it was a choice between putting down in Ireland or keeping going to northern England, although the country isn’t all that wide at that point and with the wind really picking up wouldn’t actually present the largest of targets. If I carried on it would still be light when I crossed the Irish Sea, and I really felt I wanted to get properly home and land in England, so that was the decision I made.
It was pretty rough up there now and I was coming in fairly low ready for landfall. I was wearing my immersion suit still, in case I came up short, but despite the poor visibility I could see the coast. It was 5.00 p.m. and awful weather, the rain now falling. In the distance I could see the lights of Blackpool Airport and I wasn’t alone in the sky, a police helicopter buzzing around, a couple more following and several fixed wing planes that I assumed were carrying media. I couldn’t mistake the landmark of the Blackpool Tower. Dave Owen and Clive Bailey, who was also in the control room, suggested I should try and land on the beach, but my response to that was ‘are you crazy?’ I was travelling at about 12 knots now, and if I made a mess of attempting to hit, and more to the point actually stopping on, the sand I could very easily take out the whole front of the Blackpool Illuminations. That really would have made me popular.
The police helicopter tried to direct me towards a golf course over on my left, getting a terse response that I had no choice in the matter and was going wherever the wind took me. Fortunately I was now over some fields just the far side of the town, and knowing this had to be it I came down and put out the trail rope, then tried to pull out the top of the balloon. You always know this might be difficult if it is secured too firmly, as the alternative could prove far worse, and on this occasion it just wouldn’t come out at all. It was going to be one hell of a struggle coming to a halt in the wind that was now blowing.
I hit one hedge hard, but the big volume of my balloon meant the wind just dragged me straight through and into the next field. I bumped over that and into a barbed wire fence, but again I was plucked right out the other side trailing strands of wire behind me. Not too far away on the other side of the next hedge I could see some big high-tension electric wires, and I was alread
y starting to think that if I couldn’t stop before them and went through that hedge too it would be time to shout ‘Geronimo!’ and jump for it. This was a big hedge with a ditch in front of it, I hit it hard and . . . Stopped! I could feel the wind tugging at me, plucking at the balloon, and was it going to hold? Luckily there was a farmer nearby who drove over on his tractor, and I asked him to take my trail rope and tie it around the closest tree.
I now managed finally to rip the top off and let out a lot more gas, so I truly was stationary at last and not going anywhere again. There was a lot of activity around me with helicopters overhead, and a crowd of kids from the local houses had started to gather. I don’t really blame them now and I’d probably have done the same, but I was pretty pissed off at the time that they started to nick all my stuff, maps, compasses, anything they could carry off. People from the media were there by now who wanted to interview me, and I kept having to nip back and try to shoo these little blighters away.
I’d called Clive after I landed, and he got a guy he knew in the Lake District to drive down and pick everything up on a trailer. By 9.00 p.m. it was just me standing there alone in that field, in the dark with drizzle falling. I was still in my immersion suit of course, with no pockets, and realized that I didn’t have any money. I was beginning to feel a bit daft and wondered what on earth I was going to do now? I must have looked a bit of a plonker, but this chap pulled up in his car and I asked him if he’d give me a lift into town where I could find an ATM machine. It looked like I’d be spending the night in a local bed and breakfast. He asked me where I actually lived and I replied that was all the way down near Bath. I was stunned when he said he’d need to ring his missus first, but if she said it was ok maybe he could take me. After making a few phone calls he came back and said fine, let’s go!
No Such Thing as Failure Page 20