Posted on Thursday 01 March 2012

For Mark Jennings-Bates the dream of achieving a new world record for the longest continuous paramotor journey is over. Having already flown close to 4,000 kilometres, the 48-year-old adventurer suffered a broken propeller after a bad launch in Queensland and has been grounded until replacements can be flown in from the UK.

Jennings-Bates is expected to rejoin fellow pilot Glenn Derouin in the air again this week but with only one pilot eligible for the potential Guinness World Record it has been a hard pill to swallow.

鈥淲e all knew it was going to take precious time to get the props here,鈥� explains Jennings-Bates. 鈥淲e had two choices, wait for a few weeks so that we could carry on as a team, or continue giving the team as a whole the best chance of success. Having spent more than two years planning this I am of course gutted, it was probably the most difficult decision I have made in my life. At the end of the day, the whole project is to raise awareness and funds for charity, so the show must go on, it is not about me personally getting a world record, although I have to admit, that would have been cool.鈥�

The team is hoping that the challenging weather which has made progress difficult for Derouin will settle down as they get into New South Wales and South Australia, although flying through the Nullarbor desert could still present some very serious issues. Add to that the fact that this is the second wettest year on record for Australia and that New South Wales is bracing itself for its second largest rainfall event ever and it is easy to understand how the trip has been challenging!

鈥淲e have great tools at our disposal, like PredictWind.com to help us look at weather, but we did not expect to find so many micro climates in what is really a fairly flat country.鈥� explains Derouin, 鈥淎s we fly, we can be in smooth warm air one minute and then knocked around in the air by a cold dense flow that we could not predict, it is challenging flying for sure.鈥�

Donations are being accepted for the Royal Flying Doctor Service and Rally4Life, details on the two charities and how to donate can be found at http://www.theflight4life.com.