AS YVES Rossy, known as Rocket Man, sailed over the North Atlantic in his jet-powered wing yesterday, you can only imagine he was humming along to the Elton John song which shares his nickname.
If so, the line And I think it's gonna be a long long time/Till touchdown brings me round again to findmay have been a bit presumptive.
Midway through the attempt to power himself from Tangiers in Morocco to Atlanterra in Spain, Rossy found himself paddling in the deep blue, some way from shore, before being rescued by his team.
The 50-year-old former fighter pilot, who has already soared single-handedly over the Swiss Alps and the Channel, attempted to cover the distance of 28km across the Straits of Gibraltar, with a bright red, homemade wing spanning 2.5m strapped to his back and powered by four kerosene-fuelled jet engines. Billed as the first intercontinental crossing from Africa to Europe using a jet-powered wing, Rossy was flown by aircraft to an altitude of 1,950m, then jumped out and headed away.
But even the best-laid plans can go awry, as Rossy found. Within minutes he disappeared, lost in thick cloud.
As his team and camera crews peered into the gloom anxiously, Rossy was already on the way towards his damp fate – being picked up by helicopter after ditching in the ocean.
Swiss Rossy is no stranger to thrill-seeking feats and gave the first public demonstration of his homemade aircraft in May 2008, doing figure of eights over the Alps before touching down near the eastern shore of Lake Geneva.
Stuart Sterzel, chief executive of Webtel, the specialist mobile phone company that sponsored Rossy, said an “engine malfunction” was the likely cause of his soggy ending, but he would be back. – (Guardian service)