Over the North Atlantic Ocean
By Chris Wall
9/22/2000 -- 3753 degrees N 18 01 W Altitude 10,000ft Speed 175 knots Heading 084 930 miles to Barcelona, Spain I am typing on our laptop at 10,000 feet between Santa Maria and Portugal. The sun us setting on the horizon and is absolutely beautiful. It is pretty cold in the plane we are wearing our heavy jackets, but it is not nearly as cold as it was when we left out of St. John’s. We have a heater that we can use that makes a comfortable temperature in the plane but we have been trying not to use it to conserve fuel. It is a gas heater that works off the same fuel that powers the engines. It doesn’t use much fuel maybe about 1 gal per hour but every little bit counts. As we left San Miguel we fly around the island. I will let the pictures tell the story on that one. Dealing with the people at the airport has been pretty easy and everybody has been very friendly. We flew from Ponta Delgada to Santa Maria to refuel. Thank you SATA for the donation of 1000 liters of AVGAS. The picture below is of me making a phone call back to the office on our satellite phone. It is completely dark out now and we just shut off all the lights on the plane. The stars you can see are unlike anything I can ever imagine. The milky way can be see clear as day and looks like a fuzzy white band across the sky.