I guess he must have felt sorry for me, but blimey this was kind. I remember climbing into his car and putting my seat back, just getting onto the M6, and then I must have dropped straight off and gone deep asleep. The next thing I knew he was shaking me awake, and asking exactly whereabouts near Bath I lived. We’d obviously driven all the way down the M6, onto the M5 and then the M4, and were just now coming up to my local roundabout. All the time I’d clearly been out like a light, and most probably snoring my head off. Now this was embarrassing, that he’d had to drive all the way without conversation if maybe not in silence. I told him where to go and he took me from there right to my front door, which we arrived at about 2.00 a.m.
I invited him in assuming he would be staying the night, but he said no, he’d just have a cup of tea then needed to get back as he had to start work at 8.00 a.m. the next day. I must admit I felt this was absolutely wonderful and one of the things that epitomizes Britain. I wrote to him afterwards and sent him lots of bits and pieces, and he was interviewed and appeared on the front page of his local paper, so I hope he felt that giving me a helping hand was worth it. It certainly was a great way for me to get back home, and a wonderfully unexpected end to my third and finally successful Atlantic crossing.
You can generally judge the sanity of any particular expedition by the response it receives when you explain to people what you are planning to do. Before my flight to the North Pole it was ‘Hmm, interesting.’ For my previous transatlantic flight the reaction was ‘Awesome!’ When in 2007 I suggested I was intending to do the same thing in a tiny Gordon Bennett-sized balloon everyone said ‘Are you absolutely nuts?’ This would be an AA-06, and if I made it the smallest gas balloon in which anyone had ever crossed the ocean.
On my Gordon Bennett Race experience in September 2006, when I flew from Belgium to the Russian border with my co-pilot Jonathan Mason, we’d been able to carry enough ballast to last us for four days. I therefore suspected, on paper at least, that it might be possible to fly across the Atlantic in the same amount of time. I also knew that two world-class pilots, Benoit Simeons and Bob Berben, had flown just over 2,100 miles from Albuquerque to New Brunswick. With that trip they held the current world distance record for the same AA-06 size balloon, but they had been flying over land. With a perfect weather track could I cross the greater distance over the Atlantic? My crossing in 2003 with a much larger Rozier AM-08 had only taken me three days, but that had been on a much higher flight track; this would be a seat of the pants job.
I again asked Bert Padelt if he could build me such a balloon, as he had done for my hot-air balloon altitude record earlier that year. He said, ‘Hempie, I have always wanted to try that flight in that size of balloon.’ He thought it was right on the limit of what was possible, but was adamant it should theoretically be achievable. Having worked with Bert since my first unsuccessful attempt to cross the Atlantic from Pittsburgh in 2002 I now considered him by far the most skilful balloon manufacturer in the entire world, and the basket he designed and built for me at his studio in Pennsylvania was an exquisite piece of art in my view. He’s a unique individual and a master craftsman, his workmanship and skill second to none. I’d started referring to him as the Balloon God, a name slightly belied by his appearance, since he’s on the short side and has a bald head usually concealed beneath a baseball cap. Ballooning seems to attract a lot of Alpha males, but Bert is simply kind and hard working, and I’ve never once known him to lose his temper.
I also knew I had to work with Luc Trullemans again, the Sky God as I now called him. What I admire most about him is his uncanny knack of predicting minute very local weather patterns, and since 2000 he had become a good friend, almost like an older brother to me in some ways. I asked him the night before we met for lunch in Belgium if he could look at historical tracks from St John’s on Newfoundland in the summer; I’d need a flight profile of 5,000 feet after take-off, 7,000 feet during the second day, 10,000 feet on the third day and 13,000 feet the fourth. After two weeks Luc said he’d given up, he just had so many possibilities. I’d waited two months for my last weather window in New Brunswick.
My logistics director was Nigel Mitchell, an old friend who as managing director of Chase de Vere, had sponsored an earlier flight of mine. With his boyish grin I’ve come to rely on him, he and Bob Wilson becoming my retrieve crew on several balloon expeditions. Nigel flew out to St John’s for a recce and everything seemed in place to fly from 1 July, 2007. It is always practically impossible to predict the exact day of any balloon flight, as there are so many different factors to take into consideration. One of the most difficult issues with this flight from Newfoundland was its extremely remote location. The truck containing our helium had to travel all the way from Toronto via a ferry to St John’s. This cost tens of thousands of pounds and I knew that the clock was ticking as time passed.
We landed late on a Friday evening just before midnight, then on Saturday morning over breakfast we looked at our first weather data for a possible take-off time. Monday night immediately looked as if it would be perfect, but the minute we were given that as a possible launch target we were thrown into panic stations. There was so much we had to do in very little time: fit out the basket, fill the sandbags, put batteries on charge, get helium onto the field, perform the radio checks, prepare the food, do the Argos tracking system checks. Six hours later Luc called to say, ‘Looks good for a flight straight over to Bristol.’ My God, this was really going to happen fast! It was a hectic rush for everyone, but I actually prefer not having to spend too long hanging around.
Back in England the control room team, Flight Director Clive Bailey—who I consider to be one of the best control men in the world—and Air Traffic Control Co-Ordinator Kevin Stass, were busy getting ready at Toshiba HQ in Weybridge, Surrey. It’s always useful to me that Clive is a balloon pilot himself, and since we’ve known each other a while he’s very familiar with me indeed so he can easily judge my moods and seems able to second-guess my feelings at any time, which can be vitally important when you are severely stressed and things appear to be going badly wrong. As an excellent meteorologist he is also able to quiz Luc on flight paths. Clive is one of the most hyper men I know, like an untrained Labrador on Red Bull with so much energy he makes everyone else feel slow, whereas Kevin is the complete opposite being calm, collected and low-key, and that seems to make them a perfect combination.
On the day of the launch I was getting mixed messages about the weather tracks we could expect. Bert Padelt said he was convinced we had an absolutely perfect one we shouldn’t miss. However Tim Cole, whom I of course also trusted hugely, warned ‘Whatever you do, don’t take off!’ I told Bert what Tim was saying and he contacted Luc Trullemans, who insisted, ‘Go! These are the best conditions you will ever have.’ Then Bert came back to me and asked, ‘What do you want to do?’
By this stage they had started to fill the balloon with gas. I spoke to Luc myself and told him, ‘Tim doesn’t want me to fly. Are these valid concerns?’ Since Luc was the meteorologist who had helped me fly safely to the North Pole and back when everyone else said I stood no chance of getting there, he was a man I literally trusted with my life. In the end I followed my gut instinct and Luc’s advice. After kissing a cod for good luck (a weird local superstition, but I wasn’t taking any chances) I was ready to fly. At 11.30 Zulu (GMT) Monday night, I slipped into my immersion suit and put my lucky bead in my mouth. I also wore a parachute, as the very start of a flight is when your balloon is at its heaviest, and if a seam is ever going to split it most likely would be then, although you take it off after a couple of hours. Bert said the Balloonist’s Prayer and I was away—00.00 Zulu.
It was pitch black, I was surrounded by mist and fog, and I felt like I was going straight up in a lift. For a while I could hear a warning horn in the distance, and then there was complete silence. I thought, ‘Christ, am I making the right decision?’ Up through the thick cloud I went and then, suddenly at 3,000 f
eet, it was like turning on a light switch; up above were brilliantly gleaming stars and a full moon. I was on my way.
I had to stay north of a nasty weather system. The first day I was hanging around at 5,000 feet at only 5 knots. Luc had ‘parked’ me so I wouldn’t catch up with some bad weather heading over into Europe. That first day out of Canada was very hard because it was such slow mileage. I was only moving at 2 or 3 miles an hour, still within spitting distance of land, and sometimes I could hear helicopters passing beneath the cloud. So far to go, and the constant fear in my mind was that I would run out of ballast half-way across. I was genuinely worried that I might have to land in the sea. Occasionally I contacted Luc to ask him what was going on, but he just said, ‘Don’t worry Hempie, this is exactly where I want you.’ He kept reassuring me where I would be in a few hours’ time and he was always bang on the money.
However with nothing much happening it gave me plenty of time to think. I have often been asked, ‘What do you fear most on a balloon trip across the Atlantic?’ My biggest anxiety has always been, without any shadow of doubt, that I might have to ditch in the North Atlantic, in pitch blackness with a swell, lose my dingy and get tied up in the flying wires. In the run up to the flight this had become a frequent recurring nightmare for me. The truth is I frankly don’t like water very much at all and I’m not actually a terribly strong swimmer. This fear of drowning meant that every hour I was flying the balloon I kept rehearsing my ditching drill like a mantra:
Contact the control room with latitude and longitude.
Switch on the McMurdo (a satellite tracking beacon).
Do up immersion suit, put on life jacket, clip life raft to me.
Get grab bag full of radios ready.
Take seasickness tablets.
Meanwhile, back at the control room in Weybridge Clive and Kevin, plus two pilots, Graham Duff who I’d later take to Everest and Jordan River Scott, all got themselves into a great routine and did their best to keep me calm. The second day out my speed started to pick up and I went through the 15 knot barrier for the first time. I even managed to catnap quite well for the first couple of hours in the morning. All through the flight I slowly climbed, picking up speed as I went. Bert had given me a flight profile all through each day and night, with exactly how much sand I would use until I landed—he was not 20lbs out at the end. I suspect that even this difference was probably because I didn’t lose as much body weight as expected during the crossing, as well as the fact that I’d given him a slightly false take-off weight, my pride having got the better of me. Luc had also given me a flight plan which was split up into detailed weather forecasts for each six hour period, giving tracks and speeds. I spoke to him every day, partly for a sociable chat to stop me getting too lonely but also to go over the weather data in depth. When I eventually landed he was just 10 miles out.
If you count the sandbags after day three and the answer is right on the money, when Clive tells you the first blush of light will hit the horizon at 6.00 a.m. with sunrise at 7.20 and it is, when Luc tells you at 4.00 a.m. you will be tracking on 095 degrees at 45 knots and you are, it all gives you a feeling of complete confidence, but certainly not arrogance or complacency. So many balloons have gone down in the sea within sight of land. I still prayed, I still had my lucky bead in my mouth when trying to find a track. I always shivered uncontrollably from the cold at night. I never stopped fearing the big black hole below waiting to swallow me up.
I became increasingly tired during the flight because I was getting no chance of any decent REM sleep, which is always one of the greatest physical challenges in long-distance ballooning when you are confined within a very cramped basket. This certainly started to influence the way I was thinking, and in many ways is more debilitating than physical tiredness. Coming over the halfway mark, into the 20’s of longitude, I saw a plane coming straight for me. I panicked, put on the strobe light and tried repeatedly to contact them on the VHF radio. This was the most frightening moment of the flight and perhaps of any expedition I have ever been on.
I knew that there shouldn’t be any planes in the vicinity and I couldn’t begin to understand how there could be an aircraft with its landing lights on slowly heading directly my way. I switched the VHF to an emergency channel and prayed the TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) in the plane would alert them to my presence. Why on earth did the pilot have his landing lights on? As my terror grew I contacted Kevin at HQ and begged him to tell me if they maybe had a plane up filming me for some reason. I was getting frantic, hyperventilating, desperately trying to think of anything I could do to avoid being mown down by this approaching jet. Clive came back on the phone to me and said, ‘Hempie, there is absolutely nothing out there!’ After five minutes of mind-numbing terror, when the plane didn’t seem to be getting nearer as I would have expected and I slowly realized that I couldn’t actually hear its approach, it finally dawned on me that in fact it wasn’t at all an aircraft but the planet Venus I was seeing, big, bold and bright. I felt an idiot at having made such a mistake, but was almost weeping with relief at the same time.
By the third night I was tracking in at 50 knots, gobbling up the distance. Whilst I was above the clouds, I could still judge the speed by looking down at them. I knew I’d beaten the AA-06 distance record over the sea, but actually by this stage I don’t think I was remotely interested in breaking any records. All I desperately wanted now was to be over land. I was utterly exhausted and fed up of being on the edge with the possibility of still landing in the waves below.
My path had taken me well south of England and coming up towards Nantes in France, in the early hours of the morning, I started to run parallel to the coastline. I immediately started to panic that I was about to start heading back out to sea. I was so tired and completely shot, I really didn’t know where I was going. Clive said, ‘Don’t worry, just keep giving us your position.’ I knew I had to put my faith in the team, but it seemed an age before I finally made landfall. Ironically, Jordan River Scott was then doing his day job flying into Nantes, and we chatted through air traffic control to keep me company and take my mind off my fears. Kevin had sorted me out a clear motorway corridor through France. I was desperate to land as soon as possible, but the ground speed was zipping along and I’d agreed with Clive that sunset at Dijon would give me the slackest winds for a safe touchdown. Fail on that and I would be rushing headlong into the Alps, my biggest anxiety now.
I got my orders in from Clive: ‘Slow down!’ Down 3,000 feet, 20 knots still. Over the hills I was gradually descending, but then it became very thermic. The wind speed was getting far too high. I was rapidly approaching the Swiss–French border and I was now very light. A spoonful of sand over the side and up I went! Approaching Nolay and above an uphill sloping field the other side. I was going very fast at 50 knots again now and all I could see were vineyards beneath me, and as I dropped I was tossed violently around. I threw out some sand and shot up immediately. I saw the Nolay church spire approaching and thought, ‘I must miss it!’ I decided I had no option but to land into the hillside and, true enough, I smacked into the side of a 45-degree slope. It was like being in a car crash without a seat belt on.
I landed at 15 knots, trail rope out. The balloon was so small at 37,000 cubic feet that people must have thought it was nothing more than a small hot-air balloon out on a brief pleasure flight. How many locals these days go and see a hot-air balloon landing around Britain? Zero. When the Americans landed in France in the seventies, after becoming the first ever successfully to cross the Atlantic in a balloon, there were thousands of spectators waiting to greet them. My only visitors on arrival were nine bemused cows.
Within no time at all my loyal ground crew Nigel and Bob turned up with the Union Jack flag and a bottle of champagne. Then the cavalry arrived: German, French and British media. My feet were badly swollen due to the lack of any real movement in the cramped wicker basket, but despite this minor inconvenience I felt pure relief
to be back on solid earth. On reflection, I’d been quite naïve about the trip. I had thought that if I needed to ditch in the Atlantic I could simply inflate my life raft and bob around for a few days until someone came to get me, but I didn’t see a single yacht or ship during my entire crossing until I reached the coast of France.
Except for the first morning I’d had to rely on half hour-kips—anything longer and I could have woken up to find the balloon falling into the sea. And the sleep deprivation had made me utterly paranoid. I was petrified that in my sleep I would accidentally pull on a release rope and expel all the helium from the balloon, and that would definitely have been that. Clive told me I’d broken five distance and duration records. Normally I’m actually quite unconcerned when someone breaks one of my records, but this time I certainly felt I wanted to keep hold of them all for a while. I’ve been on some challenging flights but, without a doubt, this one came closest to the wire.
In one way at least ballooning is similar to climbing, in that it has many different facets and there are a great variety of ways in which you can participate. A climber can simply want to tackle the technical challenges of an indoor climbing wall, or short climbs when bouldering, but at the other end of the scale they can set out to become involved in high-altitude mountaineering with the different necessary skills to tackle rock and ice. With ballooning at its most basic level you have private pilots off on a jolly flying in hot-air balloons. That’s what I am much of the time, even if I do have a commercial licence, but although I sometimes take passengers I don’t fly people for a living in any sense.
No Such Thing as Failure Page 21