We tried to get an early start by racing to Wilson airport before the sun rose only discover that we had left our all important backup Garmin 495 behind …
Right now we are on the apron at Khartoum International airport waiting for our “agent” by the name of Ayatollah to organize 200 litres of avgas for us. We didn’t expect to arrive at such a large and busy airport and have to persuade our handlers that we really don’t want Jet A1.
Before landing we decided to get dressed in our best pilot captain gear and which is a white short sleeved shirt and 3 stripes on the shoulder. What rank does that make us – Generals or what? Anyway it seems to be working because everyone is very respectful and helpful but still a bit useless!
The flight was our toughest yet – 11 hours in the air in quite bad turbulence for most of the day with headwinds and with both of us dealing with exhaustion. We spent a lot of time calculating our range taking different scenarios into account. At the end we were quite relaxed – we landed with 2 hours of fuel left.
The 2 of us are getting on well and enjoying ourselves – we have the same aim .. to travel fast to Europe without killing ourselves and to that end we are pushing ourselves hard and thinking safety quite a lot. In the cockpit we chat a bit about all sorts of things but because we are tired one of us is often trying to get a bit of shuteye. This is a standard Sling that we are flying which means that the seats cannot lie flat like in our around the world Sling which made sleeping so much easier.
Before we left my wife Charmaine packed the best food ever for us which we ate on the first 2 days – today we had food from Cassy’s kitchen so we are doing well on the getting fat front. Right now however we need a cold coke and a long beer. And sitting out here on the tarmac in 42 degrees C temperature is making us grumpy.
If we get avgas we will fly to Alexandria tomorrow which should be a 10 hour flight. We will be dealing with severe desert dust and 30 knot winds gusting to 40 knots from the west … or was it the east? Tim is our weatherman again this year … he is saving our skins once again. The Sling against the weather is the challenge.
Yay the avgas has arrived in a 200 L drum.
Now we are in a hotel. It is 11pm and our wakeup call is at 3.30 am, As soon as our food arrives we sleep. Actually James is asleep already. He just ordered a large Sudanese room service chicken something.
I am going to shower and stuff now …
Food is here.
ByeJames and Mike
