Tag Archives: Adventure

Over and out

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Now we can really consider this trip to completed successfully. Our Cessna is well and back in its home hangar and both pilots are alive. Who would have thought that? When we could not complete the approach into Heubach with visual flight rules (there is no instrument approach unfortunately) and decided against landing in Stuttgart, we had to park the Cessna in Friedrichshafen at the Lake of Constance. Today it was time to bring back the bird. When the mission is to get up early on a Sunday and take responsibility for an important task, it is clear that Achim has to step in. Markus was still trying to sober up from yesterday's binge drinking before getting up for his kebap breakfast at 12 o'clock in Stuttgart. Achim boarded the metro at 08:34 and arrived at Friedrichshafen Airport around 11 o'clock where it was still cloudy, unlike in sunny Stuttgart. To great surprise, the airport was vibrating as it recently has become the hub of ski fanatic Brits: three airplanes from London all arriving within one hour!

The flight back was just a short hop of 30 minutes and after takeoff lead us south west over the Lake of Constance, climbing through the clouds to blue skies and on direct course to Heubach. After landing, the Cessna was stored in the hangar and tidied up a bit. The real interesting question is how we are going to get rid of the Sahara sand which was pressed into every corner and wrinkle when we flew back to Greece. 

Insha’Allah

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Everybody has heard the Arabic expression Insha'Allah which is ubiquitous around here. It means something along the lines of "hopefully God agrees" and alludes to the fact that while man might plan and wish for certain results, the ultimate decision for everything is with Allah. While Europeans don't like to admit this obvious fact, the Arabs are well aware of whom the decision is with and openly communicate it. In radio communication between airplanes and air traffic controllers, it is an indispensable component and part of every request and permission. In the Middle East, you have to forget about your standard phraseology that you learned when doing your pilot license in Europe and adapt to the local customs. One of the biggest surprises of this journey was the excellent quality of air traffic control in Egypt — controllers with fluent English, a relaxed atmosphere and people supportive of our needs. For the benefit of European pilots and air traffic controllers, we have collected a few examples:

  • "Cairo RADAR, Cairo, Cairo, D-EDGK, salam aleikum, request shortcut direct El Gouna, insha'allah"
  • "D-EDGK, approved, direct El Gouna, isha'allah"
  • "El Gouna Tower, D-EDGK, salam aleikum, request landing information, insha'allah"
  • "D-EDGK cleared to land runway 34, insha'allah"

El Gouna to Marsa Alam at 8 knots

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When two pros like Markus and Achim are in town, it doesn’t take long for difficult jobs to emerge. Yesterday it was about bringing Ocean Diva II, a 74 foot catamaran, from its previous harbor El Gouna to Port Ghalib (Marsa Alam), 120 nautical miles south.

Due to the revolution and the subsequent decline in tourism, OD II (as friends like to call her) spent some time alone in the harbor and therefore the trip was also a sea trial. 30 knots of tailwind and arrival at an unknown marina in the middle of the night promised an interesting trip.

Another goal was to try out Achim’s newly acquired trolling equipment. The latter was fully achieved: after about 15 minutes a 10kg thuna, two monster fish that first bent the rod and then went off with an aching jaw and last but not least a marvellous 20 kg dorade. Both were expertly cut by Khaled and served as the traditional welcome gift for the harbor employees. Achim — economist by profession — immediately determined the return on investment for his fishing gear (4 more fish) and we are currently working on our business plan as fishermen in Egypt.

This trip was not for sissys (which is why Markus didn’t fully enjoy it) and there were a few challenges that made it more interesting:

  • The crew had to improvise on several occasions, this was clearly not an everyday’s cruise
  • Sea maps and especially harbor entrance maps were considered as non necessary payload
  • The main sail couldn’t be hoisted due to incorrect reefing and correcting the problem at 30 knots of wind and 3.5m waves was deemed too risky
  • The starboard engine broke down due to a problem with the propellor shaft bearing (not the first time, bad workmanship by Volvo)
  • Continuing the trip on one engine and only the jib was slow and impossible with the fuel reserves we had
  • It was then decided to hoist the main sail which did not complete without putting the ship and crew at risk
  • The marina entry at Port Ghalib (no maps!) was quite interesting due to broken and invisible marker beacons. Markus was constantly mumbling something about life vests and dying.

All in all a successful trip. Today we are heading back to El Gouna in a car.

No flight today

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After reaching our final destination El Gouna yesterday after 13 hours of flight, we will stay on the ground today — or let's better say on the water. Enjoying the Egyptian temperatures while swimming, snorkeling, fishing, wakeboarding and relaxing. Our next take off heading north again is planned for mid next week and we will of course report here again.

Getting ready for Africa

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5:45am local time (that means 4:45am German time) is definitely way too early, in particular if you have to share a hotel room with the snoring Achim and couldn’t sleep at all. However, today we have a challenging leg ahead and need every minute we can get. While yesterday Achim managed to drop the Cessna from meters high onto the runway, today it’s about flying over the open Med for about 3 hours, going from Europe to Africa. The particular danger with a single engine airplane is that in case of an engine failure we’d have no other option than to perform a water ditching somewhere on the ocean. That’s why during the whole flight we will by wearing life jacks and have the life raft and grab bag with our survival gear readily available. Fingers crossed we won’t need any of them. Our first destination in Africa is “Port Said” (well known from TV and radio) where Ahmed is going to help us with immigration and the famous Egyptian paperwork. Also we will be siphoning the fuel that we filled into jerry cans in Dubrovnik and that has been sitting on our back bench, into the aircraft’s main tanks. We could also buy fuel in Egypt but at a price of over $5 per liter and availability at one one airport that is not on our route, we prefer our jerry can solution. If Allah agrees, we will continue onwards to our final destination El Gouna, north of Hurghada.

BTW: We’ve managed to resurrect the SPOT and hope that our live tracking feature will be back today.