Right now I am sitting at JFK, wait to board my flight back home. When I
arrived, I had not even entertained the idea that I would be sitting. here. In
my mind's eye, I saw myself and Ron landing the Kodiak at the farm. Many people
have questions as to why this happened and actually want more details.
Well to summarise very simply as we have communicated before, we had
delays with the ferry tank approval. When we had verbal confirmation that it
would be issued the same day, we set off for Bangor, Maine in anticipation of
getting under way at last. The delays started putting Ron's schedule under more
and more pressure, but we decided if we could, we would still press on. We were
very disappointed to hear that there were further problems with the tank
approval, so we decided we did not want to try and waste more time on this
route.
We decided to try and re-plan the route through Greenland,
Iceland, Scotland and down West Africa. We made initial moves in this direction,
but realised that the time pressure for Ron would simply increase, not just
because the route was longer, but because it took us further north into winter
weather, which would also mean more waiting for suitable weather windows. With
this kind of time pressure we were beginning to put ourselves in a position
where we would most likely be tempted to compromise on the kind of weather
decisions we would make.
Lastly, our budget simply did not go this far,
for routing north, we would need an additional $10 000. Other smaller factors
like not getting Spidertracks (the satellite flight following service) working and other small details combined to make
us consider the decision to postpone this attempt.
We have left the
Kodiak at Maine Aero Services in Bangor, Maine, to obtain the ferry tank
approval. We expect this would take at least another month, so we have time to
re-group and plan again. We also need to raise additional funds to cover the
trip later.
The postponement of the trip is very disappointing as we had
put a lot of time and effort into making it succeed, but we know that God is
never surprised and we trust Him for His timing and
provision.
John
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