Leg 4: Praia, Cape Verde to Seawell, Barbados and Leg 5: Seawell, Barbados to Nassau, Bahamas, from the Sling blog by James Pitman

“I’m afraid we’ve been running on empty for quite a number of days and I literally haven’t had a moment to get onto the internet, write some thoughts and post some photographs.

Cape Verde, her people, refueling (from the nearby Shell garage), leaving before sunrise, the 2,100 nm flight to Barbados and Barbados itself were amazing but it was also very hard and left us quite exhausted. Mike, who doesn’t have a US visa, left us in Barbados, and we flew on this morning to the Bahamas (a 14.5-hour day followed by a 9-hour day).

But we’ve flown about 50 hours and done over 7,000 nm without one second’s headwind, and the aeroplanes are performing magnificently, with questionable fuel and a quite tired crew. We don’t use oxygen (too heavy and too much of a mission, though Linda’s plane is set up for it) and we let the incredible Garmin autopilots help with flying. Mostly, the time flying is actually easier and more restful than the time in country, because that time is mostly locating and negotiating fuel and permissions.

We’re taking a day off in Nassau, Bahamas so there’ll be some time to write some thoughts and reflections – which I can’t wait to do. So much excitement along the way. Meanwhile though, here are some photographs to give the idea. Cape Verde was lovely, though quite stark and isolated. People are super friendly, a strange mixture of Island, Africa and Europe. Really quite sophisticated in many ways, but not in others. Great music, great vibe, great people, great restaurants. More later. The flight was 14 hours, average wind 30 knots directly from behind. The weather was mostly excellent, save for the need to deviate norther towards the end to avoid congested storms. You can’t really ask for much better. And Barbados beautiful to arrive to. What a privilege!”

– James

“It’s now 1h00 am in the Bahamas and I should be sleeping but we’ve had truly the most magnificent day’s flying. It quite honestly feels like a month, not a week since we left Johannesburg. I can hardly believe we’ve come this far and that, failing catastrophe, we should be in Oshkosh by Wednesday mid-morning latest.

There is SO much to tell, and I’ll do it all on my next update between taking ferry tanks out of some of the planes, surfing, drinking cocktails and perhaps sleeping. We arrived in Barbados pretty much on our knees and then slept only briefly before this morning’s take-off – though without Mike, who has no US visa and so had to fly out commercially (to join his wife, Sue, for a well-deserved break in Europe). But today’s flying was so easy and so beautiful, that we’re all re-energised.

I know it’s a bit boring to repeat again and again, but we’ve now flown more than 7,000 nm from JHB to Nassau, only 170 nm from Florida, and we’ve had tailwinds literally every single inch – almost always more than 20 kts, sometimes more than 40 kts. You really can’t ask for much more. And today we must have flown over 15 countries, each more dramatic than the last. I suppose you can only take so many photographs of blue water and islands, but the ones below are all taken with my cellphone, today, out of the window. What an amazing world.

Tuesday we fly to Fort Lauderdale, then on as far as possible towards Osh. Wednesday morning we plan to fly in.