Almost four years ago now, I conceived of an idea to attempt a Guinness World Record.
It was a record for charity. An attempt to fly further than anybody previously had in paramotors. At the time the provisional world record was 8,008 kilometers and had been set by Ben Jordan in Canada. I had an audacious plan to fly from South Africa, up the eastern coast of the continent, through the middle east and then down the west coast of India to Sri Lanka. It was a grandiose plan and one some friends in the security business had suggested may have a few dangers as we passed through or around places like Somalia, Yemen and Iran! They clearly had an Arab Spring barometer I didn’t possess! Sure enough chaos reigned in North Africa and subsequently isolated parts of the Gulf which would have curtailed our trip.
After a few people had banged me around the head, one of whom was another pilot, Glenn Derouin who I had asked to join me, I realised the logistics were too complicated. One of the most difficult tasks to overcome was to find a continent where we could eke out enough distance in our winter months. Somewhere with a stable weather pattern, relatively gentle winds and the opportunity to transit large tracts of land… Australia it was then!
In January this year, the team, Budd Stanley, Craig Greenwell, Glenn Derouin and myself, met for the first time at my wife’s cousin’s home in Worongary, Queensland. We were fortunate to find each other because road closures were the order of the day. Roads into and out of the Worongary area were closed due to flooding.
The advice we received was to not waste our time starting because up north there were no roads, just vast tracts of flooded Australian bush and in those floods lurked crocodiles. Fine for the paramotor pilots, but not so good for the ground crew.
We all decided we had not come this far just to turn around and head home. That was just one of many circumstances where a team meeting yielded increased determination to get the job done, whether it was mechanical gremlins, bad winds, heavy rain or in one instance, no real food for a period of up to 10 days.
We pushed on countless times through tough conditions and as a team, called it a day on the Western Australian town of Newdegate. Weather and other various gremlins had got the bast of us, but we had flown further than anyone else.
That was back in April. Then we waited. Nervously, we knew we had flown the correct distance, but the Guinness package we assembled showed two missing pieces of data from our flight instruments. We had backed everything up manually but could not retrieve the missing data. Although the errors were for short distances, we were still not sure how Guinness would view it.
My other concern was the percentage increase we had on the existing record at the time. The record then stood at 8,008 kms and as we wrapped up the trip, we had a recorded 8,215kms. Was it enough? I wasn’t sure. I asked a few friends who had managed to successfully challenge world records and they assured me the margin was substantial.
I checked my email and client account at Guinness every day from June, when I made the submission. In October I was getting nervous. Had I done something wrong? Was Guinness just really busy? Should I have paid the extra money for a fast track process?
I couldn’t answer any of the questions, I could not call to confirm, all I could do was be patient. Patience is certainly not my virtue I am afraid.
Then one morning, my wife had left for work early and I was in a slumbering sleep somewhere between sunset and sunrise when in front of my eyes, as clear as daylight were the words “GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS”. It was clearly black type and on white background. It was all I saw in front of my eyes. I woke up with a start and began to wonder why I had seen the words so clearly. Was it a dream or was I being told something. Then it came to me. When Guinness had sent me an email in the past, the words Guinness World Records were always in capital letters on the subject line… that was it. I had an email. I was so relieved to be at the end of the wait. My fate I believed was inside my computer waiting for me to start up and log in.
In my sleepy stupor, I logged in, opened up my email inbox and waited for the mornings tide of incoming mails to complete. As soon as I hit slack tide, I checked, double checked and triple checked. Something must be wrong, no email from Guinness. But why would I have had such a clear dream like that, only to be disappointed.
In one last desperate attempt to get any news, I logged into my client account and there was a new message, one I had not seen before. It started with the words “Congratulations”.
I admit to being emotional. Perhaps it was the large amount of effort and money to put the whole expedition together. Perhaps it was knowing that so many friends and family and even strangers had been pulling for us on the whole trip. Perhaps it was knowing that I had given up an opportunity to achieve the world record personally after breaking props. Whatever it was, the relief was incredible. One less daily task, one happy team and overall, it was a worthwhile project for the charity.
Now I am free to plan for the next adventure… The Wings of Kilimanjaro, another world record breaking attempt to get 200 paraglider pilots to fly from the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania… it will be equally as epic.