GENEVA -- The fear of being torn apart by thunderstorms over the Pacific or having to ditch in the Atlantic or on the desert haunted their flight.
But the elation of always finding the right wind when they needed it is what's most remembered by the two men who stretched the limits of technology to circle the Earth nonstop in a balloon.English balloon instructor Brian Jones and Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard feel a supernatural force -- "a mysterious, invisible hand" -- intervened at crucial points in their 20-day odyssey to make their circuit possible.
"When everything seemed lost, at the very last minute we always found the right trajectory and the right speed," Piccard said after returning to Switzerland.
"When I started on this flight, I was very afraid of failing," said Piccard, who comes from a family of balloon and submarine pioneers. "I said to myself that my grandfather was the first in the stratosphere and that my father was the first in the (Mariana) trench" of the Pacific Ocean, the deepest point on Earth. "That left very little to the third generation to achieve."
On Day 7, one of the most challenging parts of the navigation began. The meteorologists at the control center had to adjust the altitude of the balloon to find the perfect winds to carry it across the narrow corridor of southern China where it had permission to fly. If they went north of the 26th parallel, the Chinese authorities would require them to land.
"That demanded work, precision," said Eckert.
Somehow, they made it across without violation, although they were reminded by Chinese authorities three times that they were within 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, of the line. "Forty kilometers isn't much," Eckert said.
"I was feeling very nervous all the way across," said Jones. He and Piccard regretted they were above clouds the whole way and saw nothing of China.
Over the Pacific, they decided to take the less turbulent route straight east, avoiding the storms near Japan that had forced Elson and Prescot down.
The flight became excruciatingly slow. Making matters worse, the team lost voice communications with their control center because they were so near the equator the huge balloon blocked the antenna from contacting the satellite above. They had to resort to backup radio relays and faxes.
Approaching a line of thunderstorms, the pilots experienced one of those times when they felt they were watched over. "It was like a string pulling the balloon in the right direction," said Piccard. "There were cumulonimbus clouds on the left and on the right, and we went right between them."
The balloon went slower and slower, down to about 20 miles an hour. "We did wonder if were going to get out of there," said Jones.
Trullemans explained: "Never, never had a balloonist gone so close to the equator. We took a risk. Other meteorologists from other teams told us we were crazy to send them so close to the equator -- 'There's no wind there.' "
Trullemans said the balloon, in fact, had gone past the computer model's ability to predict where to go.
"And then that guardian angel above us guided us to the south," he said.
In the balloon, Piccard and Jones had grave doubts when they were told to descend so that winds would propel them to the southeast.
"Our 'met' people said, 'Don't worry. You'll find the jet stream. Believe us.' We didn't have any choice," Piccard said.
It was clear sailing until they approached the east coast of Mexico. Incorrect observations of the terrain they were passing over threw off the predictions and the balloonists suddenly found themselves outside the jet stream. They had to burn precious fuel to get back on track.
Jones said the control center faced a difficult decision over the Caribbean.He said he didn't want to stop but had his doubts there was enough fuel to reach the finish line.
"We were halfway over the Atlantic and I was doing furious calculations about how much fuel we had. Could we make the African coastline? If we did, could we cross the finish line?"
He said he looked up at the speed indicator and saw it go up sharply as the balloon caught another jet stream.
"At that point I just pushed the calculations away because I knew we didn't need them anymore," Jones said.
Piccard had another moment of anxiety shortly before crossing the finish line over Mauritania on March 20.
"I asked myself, 'What could stop us now?' And then the burners went out, and I couldn't relight them immediately. We started going down. I thought: 'This is incredible. We're going to fail by 15 minutes.' But the burners relighted and we went back up and crossed the finish line."
After landing, they again saw signs of "the invisible hand."
"The last bottle of propane lasted twice as long as the others," said Piccard.