As soon as the engine
began to sputter, I knew that I was in real trouble. Up until then, I had
somehow managed to convince myself that there was just something wrong with the
fuel gauges. After all, how could I possibly have burnt through my remaining
fuel as quickly as the gauges seemed to indicate? It simply wasn't possible.
But with the engine choking and gasping, clinging to life on the last fumes of
aviation fuel, it was clear that when the fuel gauges read, "Empty,"
they weren't kidding around.
The lightning strike
that took out my radio and direction-finding gear hadn't worried me all that
much. (Okay, I admit it worried me a little bit.) It wasn't the first time that
this had happened to me, and besides, I still had my compasses to direct me to
where I was going. But I did get a little bit concerned when I found nothing
but open ocean as far my eyes could see at precisely the location where I fully
expected to find tiny Howland Island—and its supply of fuel for the next leg of
my journey—waiting for me. The rapidly descending needles on my fuel gauges
made me even more nervous as I continued to scout for the island, but only when
the engine began to die did I realize that I really had a serious problem on my
hands.
The mystery of the
disappearing fuel.
The enigma of the
missing island.
The conundrum of what
do I do now?
"Exactly,"
the little voice inside my head said to me in one of those annoying
'I-told-you-so' kind of voices. "What do you do now?"
"First, I am going
to stay calm," I replied. "And think this through."
"You'd better
think fast," the little voice said, and I could almost hear it tapping on
the face of a tiny wristwatch somewhere up there in my psyche. "If you
want to make it to your twentieth birthday, that is. Don't forget that you're almost out of
fuel."
"Thanks a
lot," I replied. "You're a big help."
Easing forward with the
control wheel I pushed my trusty De Havilland Beaver into a nosedive. Residual
fuel from the custom-made fuel tanks at the back of the passenger cabin
dutifully followed the laws of gravity and spilled forward, accumulating at the
front and allowing the fuel pumps to transfer the last remaining drops of fuel
into the main forward belly tank. This maneuver breathed life back into the
engine and bought me a few more precious minutes to ponder my situation.
"Mayday, mayday,
mayday," I said, keying my radio transmitter as I leveled my flight path
out again. "This is aircraft Charlie Foxtrot Kilo Tango Yankee, calling
any ground station or vessel hearing this message, over."
I keyed the mic off and
listened intently for a reply. Any reply. Please? But there was nothing. There
was barely even static. My radio was definitely fried.
It was hard to believe
that it would all come down to this. After the months of preparation and
training. After all the adventures that I'd had, the friends I'd made, the
beauty I'd experienced, the differences and similarities I'd discovered from
one culture to the next and from one human being to the next. All of this in
the course of my epic flight around the entire world.
Or I should say,
"my epic flight almost around the entire world," in light of
my current situation.
And the irony of it was
absolutely incredible. Three-quarters of a century earlier the most famous
female pilot of them all had disappeared over this exact same endless patch of
Pacific Ocean on her own quest to circle the globe. And she had disappeared
while searching for precisely the same island that was also eluding me as I scanned
the horizon with increasing desperation.
"Okay," I
thought to myself. "Just be cool and take this one step at a time to think
the situation through." I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing,
slowing it down and reining in the impulse to panic. Inside my head, I quickly
and methodically replayed every flight that I'd ever flown. Every emergency I'd
ever faced. Every grain of experience that I had accumulated along the long
road that had led me to this very moment. Somewhere in there was a detail that
was the solution to my current predicament. I was sure of it. And all I had to
do was find it.
Maybe the answer to my
current situation lay somewhere among the ancient temples of Angkor in
Cambodia? Or in the steamy jungles of east Africa? Or inside the towering
pyramids of Giza? Or among the soaring minarets of Sarajevo? Or on the emerald
rolling hills and cliffs of western Ireland? Or on the harsh and rocky lava
fields of Iceland?
Wherever the answer
was, it was going to have to materialize quickly, or another female pilot (me)
would run the risk of being as well-known throughout the world as Amelia
Earhart. And for exactly the same reason.
"It's been a good
run at least," the little voice inside my head observed, turning oddly
philosophical as the fuel supplies ran critically low. "You've had more
experiences on this journey around the world than some people do in their
entire lifetime."
"That's it!"
I thought.
Maybe the answer to all
this lies even further back in time? All the way back to the summer that had
inspired me to undertake this epic journey in the first place. All the way back
to where North America meets the Pacific Ocean—the islands and glaciers and
whales of Alaska.
All the way back to
where this entire adventure began.
Author Interview:
