Atlantic Ocean Crossing 2nd Part

Yesterday the filling of the 5th tank was again forgotten, shocking. We take responsibility for that.
Only because of Dietmar's preflight check this morning did we notice.

Now we are on our way. All the other crews will leave later, some of them only need half of the time we need due to bigger planes.

We have the most wonderful weather, we enjoy...knowing, soon enough it will be different



Tonight if all goes well we will land in Canada and tomorrow we will have a break from wearing our suits. The immersion suits prove to be a considerable restriction of movement and us feeling comfortable. We spoke to some of the other crews and none of them are wearing suits, some have them in the back of the planes...

The tempation not to wear ours was big but we keep saying, "No, we WILL wear them, for us they are no good having them in the back...and once we reach Japan, hurrah, no more suits. Until then we will wear them over water.
Besides the heating in the plane is still not functional, we have minus 24 Degrees outside and on the inside of the windows is a very slight layer of ice.


 

Just as well we wear the suits. Hence the woolen hat.

Ice all around us, on the wings, inside outside, 18 000 feet above the atlantic, no visibility, very slight turbulences. Greenland here we come.

It is time to distract myself once more...I really do not like to fly above cold water or any water for that matter. I concentrate on writing and I will be for a while, we have 727nm in front of us; half of that above the ocean. 60 knots headwind. We estimate 4.5h unless we get more favourable wind.
This leg is one of the longest we have to fly, the longest is between Russia and Japan in one week's time.

The wind has changed and our speed has picked up, we will approach Land within 30 minutes.
We landed and departed in Greenland  in cold but dry and sunny weather conditions. 5 degree C.



The second leg over the ocean on our way to Canada, is estimated for 03:00 hours. It is sunny with an outside Temperature of minus 28 degree C. We can hardly bevieve we are arriving in Iqualuit, Canada tonight or rather in the afternoon, local time 15h30.