Balloonists Abandon World Trek
Three balloonists abandoned their bid Friday to become the first to complete a nonstop balloon trip around the world after hitting dangerous weather in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
Frustrated by slack winds, the adventurers brought their craft down in the shark-infested waters off Honolulu. All three men were rescued by the Coast Guard and were reported to be in good condition.
The men were brought ashore at Barbers Point, about 10 miles west of Honolulu. From there, they were to be taken by ambulance to a hospital for an examination. Honolulu was chosen as a landing point because of its good search and rescue facilities.
Earlier Friday, the crew, British mogul Richard Branson, American millionaire Steve Fossett and Per Lindstrand of Sweden, were feeling "deflated -- like the balloon will be in a couple of hours' time," said Mike Kendrick, the team's project director from the ground control center in England.
"I'm afraid the weather has beaten us," he said. "It's a bit of bad luck. We almost made it. I think we missed the weather by an hour."
The balloonists got sucked into a low pressure system overnight in the Pacific. They had been moving the craft up and down between 6,000 feet and 27,000 feet to find a fast enough easterly wind to carry them to the United States.
"It has been like hitting up against a solid brick wall," Branson said in a statement read by Hendrick. "We are sorry to have let you down."
 The balloon over Osaka, Japan, on Thursday. (AP) |
They had picked up an easterly wind, but at 14 knots, or 16 mph, it was not enough to get them out of trouble.
"I am sorry that it is now all over. We raced across the Pacific in winds of up to 200 mph but ended up hitting a solid trough from one end to the other," Branson said. "All day and all night we battled to get through it."
Branson said the crew's weather team predicted it would have taken the balloonists a week to get through if they were lucky. "But by the end of the week, we would more likely end up in the Pacific anyway," he said.
If the balloonists had made the U.S. West Coast, they would have broken the balloon distance record that Fossett set on an earlier attempt to circumnavigate the globe earlier this year.
It was the treacherous Pacific that ended that venture, forcing him to ditch hundreds of miles from the coast in shark-infested waters.
The crew had hoped to reach North America sometime today, flying over southern Canada or Washington State.
Balloon pilots navigate by changing the lift of the balloon to ascend or desceninto different wind systems, but cannot plan their courses and speeds precisely.
The voyage of the 272-foot-high hot-air and helium balloon began in Marrakech, Morocco, on Dec. 18, and, if successful, would have ended in Western Europe.
The team secured permission from 97 countries for overflights and initially had only four refusals: Iran, Iraq, Russia and North Korea.
China had said the balloon could cross its territory below 26 degrees north latitude, but the balloon strayed from its path Monday after navigating around storms and closed airspace over Iraq, Iran and Russia.
Written By Audrey Woods