Mike has gone out to join  the sailing vessel ‘Discovery’ for an incredible 5 week voyage through the most remote part of the Maldives. He was able to send me these pictures via the satelite phone but that’s all I have for now. Check back again soon for the full story of what Mike has been doing out there!

Mike uses the speed wing in the maldives. Photo: Jody McDonald.

Mike feelin’ good over the Indian Ocean.

And Mike feelin’ good ON the Indian Ocean:

Check out the video on 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-vpMkQ0sPM

I have just returned from the Andaman Islands where I was asked to skipper ‘Discovery’, the yacht that we sailed around Tonga on last year. The Andaman Islands belong to India and are located on the Eastern part of the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. These islands are without a doubt the least touristy place that I have ever visited. Many of the islands are totally off limits to foreigners as our everyday germs could wipe out an entire tribe. In fact while we were there yet another tribe became extinct and with it one of the oldest languages in the world. In 2004 India sent helicopters over these islands to examine the extent of the damage caused by the Tsunami but they were chased away by tribes armed with spears and bows and arrows!

This fantastic adventure started in the capital town of Port Blair, where we spent 4 long days trying to provision the boat. There are no supermarkets in Port Blair. We were driven around the busy dusty port town in an old Ambassador car by our cheerful taxi driver, Ravi. He took us to buy chickens that were slaughtered right in front of us. He rounded up his friends to help us buy beer as by law we could not buy more than 6 bottles at a time. And he took us to the wonderful markets where we were able to buy endless fruits and vegetables.

We were desperate for a swim during these first few days in Port Blair but apart from not wanting to swim in the dirty harbour where we were anchored we had also heard of recent attacks on local fishermen by salt water crocodiles, so we were an excited crew as we sailed out into the turquoise blue waters of the Andaman sea with our newly arrived guests. I pointed Discovery towards a small island where we hoped to swim with one of the local inhabitants by the name of Rajan. Rajan is an elephant. There are a few elephants that still remain on Havelock Island where they were brought to by the English for logging. Unfortunately Rajan was not up for swimming while we were there but it was very cool to see elephants roaming around a tropical island.

The main aim of this journey through the Andamans was to kite surf and to paraglide, but the highlight for me was definitely the wildlife both above and below the water. On some of the islands elephants would freely roam, on others wild deer and brightly coloured parrots. Below the surface we swam with manta rays, were escorted into a bay by a school of dolphins and Clinton, one of our guests hand fed a giant morey eel. While spear fishing we would swim alongside humphead  wrasse the size of me and white tip reef sharks.

Paragliding over the Andaman Sea was awesome. Unfortunately we didn’t fly as much as we would have liked to. The wind was rarely right….either the wrong direction or too strong and often there was just too much reef to get the boat through. But we did get to do some wonderful flights over North Cinque island. The flying was not as good as it had been on my previous trip onboard Discovery in Tonga but it always feels such a privilege to fly above these wonderful islands and their startling blue sea that envelops them.

Mike is currently onboard Discovery in the Maldives and sounds like they are doing some insane flying…so stay tuned for some great stories and pictures from Mike coming soon. Next trip on Discovery will be in Madagascar in October where we expect the flying to be incredible!

Thanks to my crew….Jody, Mikey and Bobby and thank you Gav for trusting me to skipper your wonderful boat.

You can follow Discovery as she travels around the world on www.offshoreodysseys.com

Gavin McClurgh is the skipper of Discovery, a 57ft catamaran that is on a five year circumnavigation around the world as part of a kite surf and paragliding expedition in search of the remotest parts of the planet to kite and fly. I had the privilege, along with my twin brother Mike, to be invited to join the boat to spend some time with our friends and in order to help Gavin with the first test flights on the new winch.

We had barely been in Tonga for a few hours before we went flying. We were slightly jet-lagged and quite tired but excitement overcame reason. Discovery was lying in the hot, sticky and dirty little port of Nukualofa and everyone was keen to head out to a small group of desert islands as quickly as possible. We dropped the anchor into the crystal clear waters off the coast of a most alluring and stunning little island. The beach of white sand formed a spur pointing perfectly into a light sea breeze with just the right distance of open deep water before reaching the jagged reef that surrounded the tiny island. ‘What if we don’t find another spot as perfect as this to use the winch?’ a few of us murmured, ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of similar islands throughout this part of the South Pacific. Before we knew it we were lifting the heavy winch into the tender and pulling out brand new gliders and harnesses courtesy of GIN. We were like a group of excited, naughty children running around getting ready to fly. Bruce, a good friend of ours and one of the owners of Discovery, was in all probability the first person to ever fly over Tongan waters. The view that our eyes feasted on from the air was just incredible! A perfect desert island surrounded by turquoise water with our catamaran sitting below all encased within a circular reef. Our excitement continued to get the better of us and Jody, a professional photographer, wanted to get some pictures. I could see her mind reeling faster than the winch as she thought of ways to get the shot she wanted. So we hoisted her up to the top of the mast with the idea that we would winch Mike low and close to the boat so that Jody could get a shot from above with the glider flying close to the catamaran and the tow boat in front. Maybe a little bit ambitious for day 1 but like I said were like a group of animated children. We didn’t actually get the shot. We came too close to the boat, snagged the tow line and Mike ended up in the water. It was not going to be the last time that we got wet…and not the last time that it would be from trying to get ‘the shot’! It was an incredible first day and as we relaxed on the deck that evening drinking cold beer with good friends, I knew that two weeks was going to be far too short.

In the way that a battle ship is loaded with guns, Discovery is loaded with toys! Sometimes we would finish breakfast and go flying, other times we’d pick up a surf board and go and play on the waves that were constantly breaking on the reefs surrounding us. When the wind would pick up we’d go kite-surfing and when we really wanted to relax we’d go diving in the wonderful underwater caves. But for me the most magical pass time when we weren’t flying was following the hump back whales with their calves as they came right up to our boat and would even fully breach just off our bow.

The two chefs on board were a lovely couple, Hannah and Lars, who before joining Discovery were both working for Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck, so needless to say that mealtimes were some of the highlights of each day. Lars was not a pilot but his desire to see what all the fuss was about every time that the rest of us would chatter excitedly after another flight was evident and I for one was desperate to get him in the air. Our excitement had been contagious and it was only fair that we shared our addiction with him. And so it was that Lars experienced quite possibly the best and most spectacular first flight ever! Our only scandalous wrong-doing in this act was that a first flight such as this would be near impossible to beat and he would most likely be very disappointed the next time he went flying after this trip.

Things didn’t always run smoothly or according to plan. We finished in the water on countless occasions. Numerous times we would get wet from trying to capture a particular moment on camera. Jody took some great ‘over/under’ shots with a glider being towed just above the surface of the water with the coral just below in the foreground. This was a challenging photo to take, firstly for Jody as a photographer who needed to focus one lens in two worlds, which I can only imagine is a very difficult thing to do. Secondly it was not easy for the winch man who needed to keep the pilot just off the water all the way out to the point where Jody was hovering over the coral. The paraglider needed to be so close to the water otherwise Jody’s camera would not get everything into the frame with her wide angle lens. Keeping the pilots feet just above the sea for such a distance proved to be a very difficult task for the winch man whose brake hand was not too steady as the little rubber boat bounced up and down over the swell. On one occasion I was being winched and just as I was in position for the photo Gavin had to swerve to avoid a shallow patch of coral and in the seconds that followed I was in the water! Ah the things we do for fame!

We finished up in the water for other reasons too. We were still getting used to the winch and for most of the crew it was the first time ever using a winch, which was partly why I was there. Sometimes in light winds we would struggle to get the pilot high enough and so the long trek back to the beach would sometimes mean not reaching it. In order to try and overcome this problem on light wind days, we decided to try step towing. Unfortunately we never actually managed to and got wet a few more time as a result! The tender that the winch was operated from only had a 40 horsepower outboard which was ample to winch in wind and just powerful enough to winch with no wind, but when attempting to step tow we found that, even with the slightest breeze, the glider could not stay behind the boat, constantly overtaking it. Landing in the water was never an issue with our rescue boat below us at all times and with the water being so calm.

Our final flight was, as they say in tongan, ‘Hange ha ika kuo vae’, or ‘like the fine fillets of a deep sea fish’. We found a ridge that was square onto a smooth 10 knot sea breeze, just strong enough to soar with a perfect little beach below to take off and land. It meant that we could get 3 paragliders into the air all that same time. Instead of flying alone, we were now able to fly with our friends and instead of landing because we had to, we were landing because we felt like it. We flew for hours and it was quite simply perfect.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Bruce, Gavin and Jody for this incredible opportunity. Mike and I will be joining Discovery again next year in Madagascar…so stay tuned!

You can follow the adventures of Discovery on www.offshoreodysseys.com

Also a very big thanks to GIN for sponsoring this trip. www.gin-gliders.com

 As I brewed my pot of coffee on an open fire, I watched the sun rise over the Kalahari Desert and it occurred to me that I live for moments like this. This was my first real African experience and people always told me that Africa will steal your heart. I wondered if that was really true, but that’s exactly what happened to me on this trip.

I would normally always embark on a journey like this with Mike, my twin brother, but this time he was on his own sailing adventure with his girlfriend, so I asked one of my best friends, also called Mike to come with me. Mike is not a pilot so I decided to take a tandem glider too so that I could share the flying experience with him. I had not originally planned on taking an engine halfway round the world with me, especially to a country like Namibia where I could easily free fly, but the more I planned my journey, the more I realised that I was going to want to fly across the hundreds of miles of grasslands. These Savannahs are the transitional lands where the dry sands of the Kalahari slowly, over a thousand kilometres, are transformed into the jungles of the North. The Savannahs are an immense vastness of dry golden grass where nothing but a few zebra and other animals roam freely under the hot Namib sun. It would be very difficult to free fly here… I was going to have to take a paramotor with me.

And so it was that I found myself travelling with more luggage than ever before. Unfortunately though, I found myself in Windhoek airport travelling rather light! I had arrived without any baggage and it was to be three days before we would see our bags. We had only planned on staying one night in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital city, in order to pick up our jeep and home for the next two weeks along with all of the provisions that we would need for our 4,000km round journey. Windhoek is a really a great staging city for this type of adventure as it’s a city where you can get hold of anything you might need. We picked up our car…an incredible Nissan truck that was equipped with long range fuel tanks, sand tracks, roof tents, fridge /freezer, GPS and even a satellite phone…just in case.

As great as Windhoek was for preparing for our little expedition, there was not a lot else to see or do there and we grew increasingly frustrated as we waited for our luggage to appear. After three days we excitedly threw our bags into the back of our truck and set off for the 500km drive to Sossusvlei. Driving out of the capital was quite a special experience. One minute we were in the type of traffic you would expect in Manhattan and the next we were travelling down a dirt road, which had ambitiously been sign posted, Trans Kalahari Highway, without another car insight…actually without anything in sight apart from a beautifully desolate landscape. We arrived at Sossusvlei just before sunset, a magnificent sight as the 1,000ft dunes rose out of the flat vastness, glowing bright red in the late evening sun.

Sossusvlei is essentially a dried up river bed, almost a thousand metres wide, where the Tsauchab river tried, but long since failed, to reach the sea before it got swallowed up by the endless Kalahari sands. It is now a protected National Park so you cannot camp here at night. The gates into the park open at 5am…we were waiting in the darkness at ten to five for them open! It is a half hour drive from the gates to the first dunes and it is truly worth being there to watch the sunrise. As I watched the dessert sand turn from grey to a bright shade of red, I started to put my engine together. It had received a few bangs and bends courtesy of British Airways, but apart from that it was very quickly ready to go and I was getting very eager to get in the air. I spent sunrise and sunset flying under power, but in the afternoon the winds would pick up and I would enjoy soaring the towering red dunes without the need of an engine, dragging my bare feet through the hot sand. Mid afternoon it tends to get too windy to fly, so we would open up our roof tents and enjoy a siesta in our cool, shady tents before setting off for a final sunset flight under power.

As ideal as all of this sounds there were some scary moments as the wind does get very strong and it can turn on very suddenly. On a few occasions I would be soaring along quite happily and then quite suddenly out of nowhere I found myself getting blown over the back of the dune and having to land any way I could on the lee-side of the hill. The dessert winds can be very strong and really seem to come from nowhere. I think that the best piece of advice I can offer anyone who would like to fly in Namibia is to be sure that you are confident in reading the sky, or go with someone who is.

All of my favourite flights were on the tandem. I have always found that special moments are half as memorable when experienced alone and whenever I found myself flying solo without another buddy flying next to me it just felt like something was missing. Most of the launches were off the flat with just a good breeze to help and even though I have logged over 2,500 tandem flights, this was actually the first time that I have ever flown tandem under power but, thankfully, it all went very smoothly. What was really quite nice was flying solo with a 250cc engine. Having the extra power was really great and I was able to get some great height gains in a very short time.

As we headed north, leaving Sossusvlei behind us we entered the grasslands. The first part of the Savannahs that we entered was an area called Kuiseb Canyon, which is not so much a canyon but a huge area of rolling small hills no more than 50 meters high. As we sped along the dusty road that wound through this strange landscape we decided that it would be great to see it from the air. It was getting close to sunset so we just pulled over, whipped out the glider and the motor and within 10 minutes we were flying over the most stunning African landscape. This particular evening flight was probably my favourite of the whole trip. I can’t explain why…it just was. We landed next to the truck just before the sun finally disappeared and before we put anything away, Mike pulled out the fold up chairs and I grabbed some cold beers from the fridge. We sat and watched the sun set…just perfect!

Another one of my favourite flights was in the middle of nowhere in the heart of the Savannah grasslands. I can’t tell you what it was called…the nearest place on our map was an animal watering hole called Ganab. We had left our camp spot in the Kuiseb at sunrise and it was still early morning when we had just seen a group of Zebra running away from us and then a gigantic vulture already thermalling above in the early morning heat. The landscape was of endless golden grass as far as the eye could see. It had to be done. We pulled over and again within 10 minutes we were climbing high above one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen. It looked like flying over an ocean with dotted dessert islands, except that the ocean was yellow. I have never seen such a flat landscape that just seems to go on forever. If man once thought you could sail to the horizon and drop off the edge of the world, as I peered down I felt that the same would happen if you walked to the end of this boundless flat countryside below me.

The biggest problem with flying in Namibia is the dust devils. On several occasions I would take-off on a downwinder with Mike following me with the truck. It was a really great way to travel. I would fly for miles switching from power to free flight and back to power again, whilst always flying on a downwind course and always having my support vehicle in sight. I would fly low over little villages in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of kids rushing to see what all the noise was about. Some of them would wave like mad whilst others were clearly too stunned to do anything but stare. Usually I would cut these wonderful flights short as I started to see the powerful dust devils swirling around all about me. In the afternoon these dusties were very common and it was only when one ripped through the jeep whilst we were driving that I realised just how powerful they really are. As it came right through the open windows of the car I struggled to keep control as we sped along.

But it was not a dust devil that nearly killed me in Namibia. It was an elephant. It happened in the northern territories of the Kalahari. We were now starting to get quite far north having flown in total over 250 miles in less than a week and I had just decided to land after another turbulent flight. The air was getting very rough and I had decided to carry on that afternoon in the car with Mike. It is very rare to see desert elephants and so we both got very excited when we saw a large herd slowly crossing the track ahead of us. As we sat on the roof of our truck I couldn’t believe it…my camera had stopped working. I desperately wanted a picture of the first elephants I had ever seen, (if I had known then how many hundreds I would see in just a few days time once we got to Etosha I wouldn’t have worried about the camera). Finally as the last elephant came by only 50 feet from where we sat with eyes wide open, my camera started to work again. The herd had looked so unbothered by our presence and they appeared so harmless as they gently plodded by that I thought it would be ok to follow them by foot, at a safe distance of course, and try to get the photo that I had missed. In my excitement I stupidly found myself alone and over a hundred meters from our jeep when the Bull elephant decided that he felt threatened and charged me. It is the only time in my life that I truly thought my time had come! I got lucky and he stopped the charge…had he not, there is absolutely no way that I could have out run him. It was a really stupid thing to do and I am very lucky to tell the tale. We were starting to get close to the region of Etosha and it was a reminder that soon we would need to stop flying as we were starting to get into lion territory and this experience had made me realise that there are many animals to watch out for other than the big cats. Africa had just taught me another lesson.

The Namibian people were as wonderful and colourful as their country. The children were beautiful too and we often picked up kids who were hitching sometimes 50 miles to go to school. We had a crazy football match with some boys on a dusty pitch in what felt like a village that time had forgotten all about and everywhere we went, we were met with welcoming smiles and lots of interest.

Namibia is a great country for a paramotorist to visit. There is definitely some good free flying here, but if you are interested in flying over a more diverse landscape of which Namibia has so much to offer, a paramotor is essential.

I have always wanted to visit the legendary and mythical site of Meteora. So when I decided to go, of course I had to take my glider and fly over the magical and unbelievable place. Meteora is both a natural and man-made miracle for want of a better word. The landscape is made up of the most incredible granite monoliths…towers of black rock that stretch their finger like shapes hundreds of feet into the air, pointing to the heavens. But as if this is not spectacular enough, perched on the top of each one sits a beautiful monastery! Hundreds of steep warn out steps carved into the granite are the only way to access these precariously balanced places of worship. The monks enter most of the monasteries by sitting in a large net and being hoisted up hundreds of feet on a pulley.

We weren’t even sure if we would be able to find a place to fly here, but we were certainly going to try! And I am very glad that we did. Take off was extremely difficult on the only possible spot that we found, especially for Mike on the tandem with our sister as he skilfully slalomed through a meandering row of bushes in a cross wind. But we all got off….and went back to fly a second time too.

Not exactly the best paragliding destination I have ever been to….but what a privilege to see this wonder of the world as it seen from the heavens!

CAMELS, GLIDERS AND AUTOMOBILES!

This was definately not the highlight of my paragliding career. We needed a guide to take us to a place hidden away enough to fly without being seen and therefore running the risk of being locked up as spies! This incredible journey consisted of a ride in a frightening jeep which got a puncture in the middle of the desert…without a spare, followed by an almost 3 hour trek on the back of some very uncomfortable and smelly camels. The next stage involved trying to push start a bullet riddled pick up truck before attempting an hour climb up a rocky ‘mountain’ in over 40°C heat…and all for a short gentle glide back down to the beach below. But any chance to fly in a wonderful new place is worth all of the efforts. We had come to Dahab to kite surf, but as I never travel anywhere without a glider stuffed somewhere in my luggage I was able to enjoy a beautiful flight in a stunning landscape…but the best part was that it was due to this flight that I was able to spot a bay in the distance which was to become one of the most exhilerating places that I have ever kite-surfed.

A PUNCTURE IN THE DESERT…WITHOUT A SPARE!

STEP 2…BY CAMEL!

MOST OF THE ENGINE IN THIS TRUCK WAS ON THE FRONT SEAT….AND WE COUNTED OVER 50 BULLET HOLES IN THE BODY WORK!

TAKE OFF AFTER AN HOUR HIKE IN 40°c HEAT.

STU KITES ACROSS THE STUNNING LOST LAGOON….WHICH WE WOULD NEVER HAVE FOUND WITHOUT THE FLIGHT.