Michael Smith flew across 25 countries in a recordbreaking circumnavigation of the world by flying boat.
Michael Smith, the 2016 AGS Adventurer of the Year, made a daring journey across 25 countries to become the first person to pilot an amphibious aircraft on a solo circumnavigation of the world.
THE ORIGINAL PLAN wasn’t to fly around the world. Enchanted by the luxury, glamour and romance of the Qantas flying boats of the 1930s, I had wanted to retrace their historic route between Australia and England as closely as possible, in my own amphibious aircraft. When I departed on 12 April last year it was a calm Melbourne morning. There was no fanfare, no media, and no sponsors as I said goodbye to my family. It was to be a personal journey – just me and my little airplane. Southern Sun is a two-seat, single-engine aircraft, that can land on runways or water; it was custom-built for this trip, its design a nod to the true flying boats of the 1930s and 40s.
I’d spent a decade researching the 1930s flying-boat route (introduced to deliver mail at a standard rate) that travelled between Rose Bay, Sydney, and Southampton, England. It was the golden age of aviation, where just 14 well-heeled passengers could sail the skies in a trip that took 10 days to reach Britain. On board was a wine cellar, a place to promenade and high windows for ticketholders to appreciate the ever-changing views. The Short Empire flying boats would coast onto the calm waters of exotic locations and passengers would overnight in luxury hotels. At the time, one ticket cost the equivalent of an average annual salary.
I had looked at what vintage planes were available to retrace the route shared by Qantas Empire Airways and Imperial Airways (one of the forerunners of British Airways), but in the end I settled on a second-hand Searey to practise with.Ten years later and with 450 flying hours under my belt, here I was with my new custom-built Searey with 13 hours’ worth of fuel tanks built in, and up to 21 hours of range with a fuel bag sitting on the seat beside me.A simple plane with basic instruments and no autopilot – I would be flying much like the old days. I was ready for adventure. My route closely followed that of the 1930s, including stops in remote Australia, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. I would leave Melbourne and finally touch down in London, on the other side of the globe.The plan wasn’t just to fly the original flight path, but to explore, to seek out the landing spots and opulent hotels enjoyed by guests. I flew over the outback and became nervous as I approached Darwin. It was my first encounter with an inter national air port. Phew! I landed easily, then left for Dili, Timor-Leste, one of the original refuelling stops (and also where my company operates the Cinema Loro sa’e free outdoor cinema program). Afterwards, as I crossed the equator between Indonesia and Singapore, I was excited to see the GPS click from S to N before
circling back to land in the middle of the ocean and cross the equator again as a ‘boat’.
The tropics mean tempestuous weather and tough flying, and I always had three hours’ worth of spare fuel. Each day, I spent 5–8 hours in the air, departing at 7am to avoid afternoon rain. Thankfully, the monsoon season cleared as I passed over India. But now I had serious heat to deal with. The highest temperature my dial reached was a blistering 53°C, when landing in Saudi Arabia. So here I changed tactics – I became a nocturnal pilot, leaving at 10pm, when it was 20°C cooler. I had only the stars for company during the long, lonely night flight over the desert, until Aqaba, Jordan, finally appeared at dawn. I was reading T.E. Lawrence’s (or Lawrence of Arabia) Seven Pillars of Wisdom, so my desert approach into Aqaba was appropriate indeed.
A trip like this requires piles of paperwork… luckily a specialist agent in the UK, and a year of planning, helped. Numerous stamps and signatures were needed at each port and local ground handlers made this arduous process simpler. They were always jovial and happy to see Southern Sun.
Lake Como, Italy, was not part of the original route but I couldn’t resist the quaint Aero Club Como. My wife, Anne, met me in this romantic hamlet and, like honeymooners, we enjoyed a week-long break on firm ground.
I could sense the finish line. After crossing France and gliding onto the calm waters of the Loire, I headed to land in Southampton waters, before clearing customs at the nearby international airport. Later, I enjoyed a bird’s-eye view of the bends and turns of the Thames before touching down into Damyns Hall, a grass airfield on London’s eastern outskirts.
I’d made it. Finally, after 60 days in the cramped cockpit, my journey was over. Or so I thought. While I planned ways to send the plane home, I yearned to continue. “Why not make it a world circumnavigation?” my wife asked. Suddenly, I had a change of plan.
While I had years to plan my London trip, now I arranged to fly to the USA in just weeks. Southern Sun would again follow another flying-boat route where possible, from Southampton to Foynes, Ireland, and then Botwood, Canada, en route to New York. But range limitations meant including Iceland and Greenland as well – truly spectacular detours.
After clearing customs and immigration in the US state of Maine, I jumped down the coast to New York City. I took in the Statue of Liberty and the crowded skyscrapers of Manhattan, flew over the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, before dropping down for a water landing on the famous Hudson River.As I rested in New York, I planned for my longest leg of the trip so far – a non-stop, 10-hour flight to the Searey factory in Tavares on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida – the birthplace of Southern Sun.
Southern Sun would follow the flying-boat route where possible.
It was magical tracing the coast, and, while my plane received a well-deserved service and some upgrades, I tackled my next problem. How to make it back to Australia?
Southern Sun couldn’t fly all the way to Hawaii, so I needed to go up to Alaska, follow the Aleutian Islands to Russia, then on to Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia before returning home. It was a long way round, but achievable, except that Russian clearances were proving difficult.
I followed the entire length of the Mississippi as I made my way north – landing on the river to sleep in my plane at night – following every turn of the river, all the way from New Orleans up to its source at Lake Itasca in Minnesota. It was heaven.After a glorious week, I landed on the lake, shut down the motor and just drifted while I ate my lunch. I couldn’t have been happier.
But time wasn’t on my side. It was late September, and the weather was turning… People warned me that soon it would be too dangerous to fly alone in wintry Alaska and the Aleutians. In Seattle in early October, I was close to giving up.The Russian permission was stalled and I was anxious about navigating the freezing Aleutians.
But then I spoke to a commercial seaplane pilot, Burke Mees, who’d been flying the Alaskan islands for many years. He told me that if I was patient, I could wait out the bad weather, flying only on the glorious days in between. “If you take your time, and accept getting stuck here and there, then you’ll make it,” he said.
It gave me the courage I needed. A day later I pushed on, jumping over Canada to Alaska and the city of Anchorage where I made final preparations. Heading westwards, a wall of cloud blocked my way. My instinct was to fly along the cloud looking for a break, but the seaplane pilot’s words echoed in my mind – plus, I really wanted to live to celebrate my son’s 21st birthday in a few years time.
For almost a month, I was grounded in Adak in the Aleutian Islands. It wasn’t the weather – frustratingly, I was still awaiting Russian permissions. It wasn’t looking good. I couldn’t go straight to Japan – it would take 22 hours, and I could carry only 21 hours’ worth of fuel. But there was another option: Attu, the last of the Aleutians and the most westerly point in the USA. Refuelling here would break the flight into six- and 18-hour legs to get me to Japan – a total of 23 hours flying.
But the island was inhabited only by rats. A Google Earth search suggested the abandoned runway was still intact. My only option was to ferry out six hours’ of fuel, leave it by the abandoned runway, fly back to Adak to wait for the next weather window, then make one really big passage. And that’s just what I did.
From Japan, a short leapfrog over the Philippines took me home. Landing in Longreach, the birthplace of Qantas, marked the completion of the circumnavigation, and two days later, on 14 November 2015, I was back in Melbourne.
Rather than a few months, it had turned into a record-breaking, seven-month journey: 210 days, 25 countries, 80 stops, 480 hours flying. With my feet back on the ground, I’m now back at work running our cinemas, a community-focused business I operate with my family. Life is good – but Southern Sun is standing by for future adventures.
LEARN MORE about Michael Smith’s incredible circumnavigation adventure at www.southernsun.voyage
My initial instinct was to fly along the cloud looking for a break.