“It’s now 1h00 am in the Bahamas and I should be sleeping but we’ve had truly the most magnificent day’s flying. It quite honestly feels like a month, not a week since we left Johannesburg. I can hardly believe we’ve come this far and that, failing catastrophe, we should be in Oshkosh by Wednesday mid-morning latest.
There is SO much to tell, and I’ll do it all on my next update between taking ferry tanks out of some of the planes, surfing, drinking cocktails and perhaps sleeping. We arrived in Barbados pretty much on our knees and then slept only briefly before this morning’s take-off – though without Mike, who has no US visa and so had to fly out commercially (to join his wife, Sue, for a well-deserved break in Europe). But today’s flying was so easy and so beautiful, that we’re all re-energised.
I know it’s a bit boring to repeat again and again, but we’ve now flown more than 7,000 nm from JHB to Nassau, only 170 nm from Florida, and we’ve had tailwinds literally every single inch – almost always more than 20 kts, sometimes more than 40 kts. You really can’t ask for much more. And today we must have flown over 15 countries, each more dramatic than the last. I suppose you can only take so many photographs of blue water and islands, but the ones below are all taken with my cellphone, today, out of the window. What an amazing world.
Tuesday we fly to Fort Lauderdale, then on as far as possible towards Osh. Wednesday morning we plan to fly in.
Thoughts and answers to questions tomorrow.”
– James
Preparing for take off – Barbados to Bahamas.
Ready.
James, what the f . . . are we doing.
Goodbye Barbados.
Barbados North East corner.
Getting comfortable.
Martinique.
Caribbean below.
Turks and Caicos.
Faaak, there are lots of these things.
Super amazing colours.
Just past Johnny Depp’s Island.
Early Bahamas.
A bit further on.
Coming home from dinner.
