Crossing the Pacific – Anchorage to Japan

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 ocean crossings. Fred, arguably the most experienced ferry pilot in the world, casually replies that he still throws up before every ocean crossing in a single engine plane. Robert writes that it shocked even the other folks in the workshop into silence.

It was really sobering reading that – just months before my own trip. And I have to admit, it was chafing on my mind for weeks. Flying the Aleutians to Japan was absolutely incredible and it went mostly without incident. But I’d be the first to say it’s not for the faint of heart.

31 July 2024: Anchorage to Cold Bay

I probably stayed in Anchorage a day longer that I needed to. My “self talk” was that I was waiting for perfect weather, but in retrospect I realize a lot of it had to do with quite a bit of apprehension about making that ocean crossing. I ended up being glued to the weather apps in an almost unhealthy fasion (beyond Foreflight, I use Windy extensively). I was planning to wait till the 1st of August to make the flight, when Michael at Frosty Fuels in Cold Bay called me on the morning of the 31st, saying that after the 31st there won’t be AvGas service for at least a week. They use a fuel truck and they were going to repurpose the fuel truck to transport car gas that was arriving on the barge the next day.

So that finally forced my hand and I filed my flight plan and made a beeline for the airport. Either way the 31st was perfect weather and I departed Merrill field in nice VFR conditions. It was an uneventful flight with some amazing scenery along the way. Closer to Cold Bay there was a layer below me and I ended up doing the RNAV 15 to breaking out at a 2000 feet base and then circled to land RW 33 into Cold Bay. Cold Bay has an enormous 10,000ft runway – part of the discarded military infrastructure throughout the Alaskan peninsula and the Aleutians. The service however was 5-star. Both Michael from the fuel and Michael from Cold Bay Lodge were waiting for me on the giant apron at Cold Bay. This was going to be the first time where I fuelled the ferry tank to the maximum and I took my time doing it (insisting that I do it myself). My strategy was to land at Adak with the maximum amount of fuel left. (There’s no fuel on Adak, so I had to ship two drums of Avgas to Adak months ago. I wanted to use maximum one of these drums to fuel up for the jump to Sapporo. The remaining drum was meant to be an emergency cache, should I have to turn around for any reason)

Fueled up I parked the plane at the tiedown spots in front the the Coast Guard hanger – happy to see a MH60 Jayhawk on the apron.

After a great steak dinner cooked by Michael, he kindly offered to go on a drive into the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. This is right next door to the town, and it wasn’t 10 minutes before we saw our first brown bear and cub. We soon saw two more, and since I only had my iPhone with me with limited zoom, the one below is basically 60 yards ahead of us in the road.

3 August 2024: Cold Bay to Adak

This flight ended up being the one that stressed me most. Weather at Adak is fairly notorious. They also don’t report TAFs (24hr terminal area forecasts). So while in Cold Bay I was basically glued to weather apps like Windy trying to make a call on when to leave. The issue with Adak is the coastal layer and fog that develops and it’s hard to predict regardless. It’s also not like you could divert somewhere else if the weather doesn’t allow landing. It meant having to fly back 4.5 hours all the way to Cold Bay as an alternate if I couldn’t get in. In the end I decided on Saturday 3 August, partly also since Michael needed my room for a new party arriving to Cold Bay Lodge, so I couldn’t delay much longer anyway. The worst case forecast for Adak was a 300ft ceiling, which was still within the limits of the ILS approach into Adak. But it still makes me nauseous thinking about having to do that – even as I write this!

I took off from Cold Bay into a fairly stiff 20kts headwind and at full ferry fuel load of 170 gallons. The aircraft performance was actually better than I anticipated and I could comfortably climb at 500ft/min even at cruise climb settings. This was also key to determine as I needed this data as input into my performance profile in Foreflight so as to get the most accurate fuel planning data for the Adak to Sapporo leg that was coming up. Once above the marine layer around Cold Bay it was a fairly straight forward flight to Adak. Radio and radar coverage drops out though along the route of flight, only to return just before Adak itself. There was a lone King Air going into Atka at the same time and we tried helping each other with relays at some point, but no luck.

Weather as I approached Adak seems to be a broken layer at around 600ft and again at 1500ft. This was at least manageable. It remains nerve-wracking not to know what awaits you though – it only becomes evident once you can actually see what’s going on. Even the automated weather broadcast is NOTAM’ed as being unreliable. (NOTAM – notice to airmen).

At around the Final Approach Fix on the ILS Z 23 approach I had the runway in sight and although a bit high, got down OK (although my approach certainly wasn’t a model of accuracy). The aiport itself is again substantial having been abondoned by the Navy in the late 90’s. I taxi’d to one of the two giant hangars and shut down. Grateful to be done honestly. It was a busy day for everyone at Adak since a barge came in with goods for everyone. (This is also how I shipped two drums of fuel to the island several months prior). I cleaned up the airplane and just about as I was done, Matt Holsinger arrived with my precious two drums of fuel. Matt had to go fetch his lovely wife Lisa at some point as it was evident that refuelling the ferry tank was going to be a 3-person job. Since there’s no infrastructere on Adak, I also had to fly my own hand pump with to do the actual fuel transfer off the back off Matt’s truck. But the three of us did a thorough job and fuelled N5810T to the brim. As we were doing this of course, it started raining and the ceiling dropped down to around 200ft. I picked my window for landing just right – but not through any unique insight on my part.

After we finished the fuelling, Matt said he’ll drive past Cory and tell him I’m around to be picked up. There’s now just 30 permanent inhabitants on Adak so of course they all know each other. Cory in turn runs the Aleutian Outfitters which include nice series of old military houses to stay in. I’ve been in touch with him and Matt for months and they were great in making things easy. Adak used to have 8000 people living there during the Navy days. Even up until Covid, there were still 300 families employed by the local fish cannery. This unfortunately shut down as a result of Covid and it seems to have been the death knell to Adak. Even the school shut down after that. (And that itself is a great facility only 20 something years old).

Cory was telling me that he has to go out the next morning to take a harbor pilot to meet an incoming Korean fish freezer vessel and help in anchor. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask if I could come with, and Cory kindly agreed. So I found myself the next morning on the Bering Sea in thick fog helping pilot Bill board a giant 500ft ship going at 11kts. What a cool experience! These vessels come directly from Korea, anchor in the bay, and the fishing vessels in the area would come and offload directly onto it, after which it leaves back to Korea when full.

Both Adak and Cold Bay are fascinating places to visit. If you’re into wildlife, and some seriously unique hunting and fishing experiences, both Cold Bay Lodge and Aleutian Outfitters will take fantastic care of you and you’ll have an experience few people will ever get, and it may not be around forever. You can still fly on Alaska Airlines to both places.

I kept scanning the weather apps, as is my habit, and both 5 August and 6 August looked good in terms of headwinds. It was going to come down to whether I could actually take off from Adak.

5-6 August 2024: Adak to Sapporo, Japan

Well, at some point I had to make the flight – and crossing the Pacific is a flight very few general aviation pilots will ever make. What lay ahead was a 14hour, 1800 nm flight, under the best conditions. If you go down, the possibility of rescue is remote. (The last Cost Guard helicopter was at Cold Bay – 5 hours’ flying away). To describe what goes through one’s mind is a post best written some other time when I’m in a more contemplative mood. It took me several days just to decompress from that experience and finally update this blog.

I set take-off time at 9am from Adak, hoping the weather would have lifted enough. The issue with Adak is that, even though it’s a nearly 8000ft runway, the prevailing winds favors runway 23, which has a substantial hill at the end of it that needs to be cleared when taking off. And with 170 gallons of fuel on board, my climb performance is greatly diminished. You can take off the other direction over the ocean, but that leaves you with a tailwind and that’s rarely a smart idea – especially when this heavy.

Since I could at least see the top of the hill below the cloud layer (only just), I decided to go for runway 23. I was off the ground and with a few blips of the stall warning and the “terrain! terrain!” of the GPS going crazy, I probably cleared the hill by a few hundred feet but I was into the clouds straight after until through the coastal layer at around 2000ft. The thing is, as all the pilots I spoke to related, if you were going to wait for perfect weather in Adak you’ll be there until next year. That take-off definitely was outside what would normally be my margins of safety. But it was one of those risks that had to be taken on a flight like this.

This brings me to my other “incident”. While pre-flighting I sumped the fuel tanks in each wing – as every pilot would do before a flight. I did the left wing, then walked over to the right wing and did that. At some point I noticed a large pool of moisture under the aircraft which didn’t make sense. It had rained during the night and I took the cover off on arrival, but that could have drained that much moisture. I walked back around and my knees went weak. Fuel was running out of the fuel drain in a steady “pee-level” stream. I kneeled down and started sticking the fuel drain nozzle back into the fuel drain, already calculating ahead how completely screwed I am if this doesn’t stop as the right wing isn’t enough to fly anywhere with, and the ferry tank drains into the left wing, meaning a leak in that wing will have the ferry tank run out too when engaged. But alas, after sumping it a few times it stopped. This happens every so often – maybe 2 or 3 times since I’ve owned the plane – where a tiny piece of dirt gets into the valve causing it to stick. The remedy is just to re-sump it. Still, I had to take a walk and just breathe deep on that one.

After climbing out, and settling at 8000ft altitude, I had about 30 knots of headwind. I knew this was going to be the case all the way to Shemya, after which it would abate and come from a flanking direction. But of course, the pilot mind over a massive body of water needs something to worry about. So I started thinking “what if that valve started leaking again”. Now I was nailed to that left tank fuel guage and I became completely convinced it’s draining faster than it should be. For two full hours I could barely take my eyes off it. My planning said I should use 135 gallons of fuel to Sapporo, leaving me about 35 gallons reserve. And if I was loosing 4 gallons every hour I still wouldn’t make it. Which might imply turning back and landing on Shemya and never getting my plane back. (Shemya is a highly secretive US military base used as a radar listening post (and who knows what other uses), since it’s the closest military base the US has to Russian territory).

As I came over Shemya I finally just said “it’s going to be OK, the damn tank is fine”. I’m pretty sure if it wasn’t the tank, something else would have bothered me. Pilots always report the engine starting to “run rough” when over open ocean.

After Shemya the winds started abating and my ground speed steadily increased from 115kts to around 130kts. Here I have to take a sidebar again and highlight the amazing support of my buddy Jon. Jon flew F14 Tomcats for the US Navy before retiring and taking a job at SouthWest Airlines. Jon was monitoring the entire 14-hour flight from back home in the US and providing constant updates via my Iridium sattelite link – weather, wind, forecasts into Japan, and just general health checks. It was a tremendous comfort having someone of his experience following along. I think without that one might go slightly bonkers. I decided to stay at 8000ft as climbing to 10,000 wasn’t going to do much in terms of wind or efficiency – except for wasting some climbing fuel. Jon reported that wind looked to be staying like this all the way to Sapporo.

Once I reached my pre-calculated “point of no return” it was clear that all was good. I had more than enough fuel left, and ground speed was good. In fact, I had an arrival slot at 5pm booked at Sapporo and I was on target for a 5.20pm landing. Of course, due to crossing the international date line, I took off at 9am on Monday the 5th, and my landing was for 5pm Tuesday the 6th! A few hours out I started also reporting to Peter Steeger, the excellent handler in Japan that I’m on track. My position reports was going great with San Francisco radio, some 3000 miles away over HF. As I entered Japanese airspace, I got a reroute from them which I would say I also handled like a pro, copying a reclearance from a 1000 miles away. I was very happy with the performance of my HF installation.

With about an hour to go, and 13 hours into the flight, I made landfall into Japan’s northern Hokaido island. Peter reported some CBs (cumulonimbus) suggesting I ask to route south around it, which I did. At 5.05pm I touched down at Sapporo. Within 5 minutes of my planned arrival time. Peter and the Japenese customs agents were waiting for me at my assigned parking spot – big enough to park commercial airliners at! Peter smoothly took me through the entire customs and immigration process – a challenge made harder by the fact that at this point I was completely scatterbrained. This is the typical scenario after shutting down the engine and closing up the aircraft. I can hardly tell you who the US president is at that point. (OK, that’s hard to do these days regardless 😉

I took a taxi to Sapporo and crashed – slept for 12 hours.