I spoke to Therese Bam of South African lifestyle TV show Kwêla in late March 2025. The interview is in Afrikaans but we’ve added subtitles in the version below.
It’s taken me two months to write this. Coming back to “normal life” after a trip like this isn’t easy. In describing the reasons behind exploration, Shackleton said: Men go out into the void spaces of the world for various reasons. Some are actuated simply by a love of adventure, some have the keen thirst for scientific knowledge, and others again are drawn away from the trodden paths by the ‘lure of little voices,’ the…
From Greenland I now only had about 15 hours of flying left to complete my circumnavigation. The end was in sight. But it wasn’t going to be easy either! 12 September 2024: Kangerlussuaq, Greenland to Iqaluit, Canada This was meant to be only a short four hour flight but I remained worried about the weather in Iqaluit as they had some low-level fog forecasted in the morning. I waited until late morning to take off…
The last few legs of the trip felt like it went by really fast. With the plane serviced one last time during this circumnavigation, I was ready to cross the Atlantic. My original route had me going to Wick in Scotland – the classic launch point for ferry flights. It also had me crossing Greenland on the more southernly route via Narsarsuaq and Goose Bay. Weather ended up blocking both. 7 September 2024: Troyes, France…
Hurghada was a decent respite from the desert heat and I enjoyed a dip or two in the Red Sea. Interesting is its popularity with Russians – to the extent that the boards in the airport are in English, Arabic and Russian. They really capitalize on the tourism roubles of the Russian middle-class. That said, I was ready to trade Hurghada for the Mediterranean. 30 August 2024: Hurghada Egypt to Heraklion, Crete It was a…
After a few days of rest in Singapore and 10T serviced, I was ready to depart for Thailand. Singapore marked the halfway mark of my trip, and up to this point, I’ve flown 80 hours of the expected 160 hours the trip would take in total. I’d also learned my lesson about not having ground support for long over-ocean flights. 20 August 2024: Singapore to Bangkok Getting out of Singapore is somewhat tricky – as…
With so few circumnavigations at the levels where I fly, it presented a unique opportunity to engage in some exciting science. Dr Dimitri Deheyn leads the Deheyn Lab at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. He’s also a fellow member of the Explorers Club. As typically happens at the club, we connected at the Annual Dinner this year and hatched together a plan to conduct a unique set of measurements as I flew…
After that giant flight from Adak, I crashed on the 7th of August and spent the day mostly just sleeping. That leg had occupied my mind for months, and having it behind me was like passing that final exam or handing in that thesis you’ve been working on for years. The result is that I didn’t see much of Sapporo – or more specifically, the surroundings in Hokkaido, which by all accounts are beautiful. I…
Robert DeLaurentis circumnavigated in 2015 and in his book about the flight he describes how, after completing the flight, he goes back to famous ferry pilot Fred Sorenson to have his ferry tank removed. (Fred, along with Dave Mathiesen who did mine, are basically the only two folks who does these ferry tank installations). As Fred is working on the aircraft Robert relates to Fred how he slept poorly and was really stressed about the…
The week before I started my flight, I had dinner with Yuri Gaspar, who circumnavigated last year with his wife in his Cessna 182T. Yuri left me with the sage words that 90% of the circumnavigation effort is the planning and preparation. Once you take off on the first leg, you’re just doing the last 10%. This is how it’s felt – especially in the weeks leading up to taking off. So after lots of…