The balloon shuttered with vibration from the buffeting of the heavy winds as we rose, straining every strap until they sang with tension, threatening to tear away in the howling wind. I couldn’t tell if we were climbing or falling. The hammering vibration made it impossible to read the numbers on the faceplate. I was being drawn into something over which I had no control, none whatsoever. Billie was right; I was stupid to try to jump a hurricane. Maybe death would be an easy way out of my messy situation, I thought fleetingly. But then, I didn’t really want to die. I didn’t really want to end my life in the middle of a stupid Atlantic hurricane. I wanted to beat this bitch of a hurricane; that was my motivation. I wanted to show Janice that I wasn’t something that could be tossed about. I could get out of this, I could make it back to safety and life!
With the strength born of desperation I hauled on the control lines, forcing the balloon about and forward to the winds. I could feel the tiny wings bite air as we swooped and soared in the heavy winds. My arms ached as if I had been pressing weights for hours. My fingers were getting numb from the grip on the lines—crucifixion syndrome, I dredged up from somewhere in the depths of my jump schooling. And then, just when I thought it would never happen, despite the strains and wobbles, we began climbing. What’s more, we were climbing at an ever increasing rate. Now that my attention on the altitude was less focused I noted the closeness of the immense cloud formation of the eyewall. Well, I had finally gained a little lateral control at this point. Down this close in the comma the gradients in wind speed were such that there was nearly a kilometer per hour difference in speed between the two sides of the balloon, which is to say that we were being sucked into the wall, willing or not. I braced myself for the turbulence I knew was awaiting me. Thank God the winds were lessening, if dropping back to a mere three hundred could be considered less.
The darkness of the eyewall enclosed me like a thick fog. No, that’s wrong! Fog is a gentle mist. The eyewall cloud was a horizontal sheet of wind driven, microscopic bullets. I could see the horizontal striations as we “drifted” through the wall. Ground speed was now down to nearly two hundred fifty with an altitude of nearly seven thousand meters, barely above the worst of the comma’s fury. Where was I in terms of the launch ship? The chronometer said I’d been aloft nearly four hours at this point. Let’s see, Janice would have moved northeast about thirty kilometers in that time as I followed my spiraling, rising ride to the top and would move another thirty or more as I worked my way back down to the surface.
There was an insistent upward tug on the lines and the altimeter readings started increasing rapidly. I must have reached the inner uplift of the eyewall. I let the strong updraft carry me upward, my ears popping with the sudden change in pressure. Lord, the altimeter was rolling so fast I could barely track the changes while the pressure was dropping at an astounding rate. A chill swept over my body as the surrounding temperature dropped; the reading said it was minus forty and dropping! The ascent rate was more than could be accounted for by the buoyancy of the balloon. After I gained another five hundred meters the wind speeds were down to a reasonable one hundred fifty kph. The force of the upward wind stream was such that I could easily be swept to the top of the storm, twenty six thousand meters above the Earth, well beyond the capabilities of my survival gear. I had to get out of the upward air stream if I was to survive.
The balloon was now a hindrance to my escape. The positive buoyancy was permitting the storm winds to lift me higher and higher. If I let it go perhaps the force of the wind would be insufficient to hold me up. Without another moment’s hesitation I cut the balloon free and tumbled helplessly down, the altimeter rolling backwards at an astounding rate. When the altimeter said I was below the thirty thousand meter mark I let out the big rogallo that was to be my escape chute out of the eye. It took less than a minute to unfold and lock itself. Finally the fabric of the chute tugged me into a stable attitude and I oriented myself to the surface. As soon as I regained my balance and a measure of control, I lifted my legs and clipped the aft line onto my heel, pushed the control lines forward, assumed a horizontal attitude, and converted my rogallo from a chute into a glider. At the same time I put strong pressure on the right side and turned to have the wind at my back. The acceleration was exhilarating as speed picked up again. But altitude and control weren’t my objectives. The idea now was to gain enough speed to blast out of the upwelling stream and reach the relative calm of the eye itself. Down, down, down I pointed the nose and felt the speed build and build as we dove faster and faster. The pressure readings showed me the route as I bore onward through the lightening mist.
Suddenly there was a burst of sunlight around me. Then I caught snatches of blue sky. I turned to head for the brightest patch in the mist and broke clear of the wall. But I hadn’t reached the calm eye just yet. On the inside of the eyewall was more of the swiftly ascending warm air that fed this beast. The rogallo tipped, pulling me upward. Despite my efforts to shift my weight forward, the wind was too strong. I couldn’t fight it.
If I didn’t escape it would carry me back into the main flow I had just left.
I leaned to the right to see if I could steer a little and had no effect on our course. Attempts to lean to the left also met with no success.
Then I remembered the way Jerry and I had used the hydraulics on the Youg when we first met Mariah. Rather than fight the flow of the water we had let it have its way and used its force to our advantage. Quickly I leaned backwards, spilling the wind from the rogallo and feeling our rise stop at the start of a slip. I let the altimeter fall two hundred meters before leaning forward and letting the wind control us once again. The maneuver had moved me a fraction closer to the center, but there was a fluttering in the control that I didn’t like. I repeated the maneuver and moved even closer, the fluttery feeling of the control lines was growing worse with each repetition. Finally, after six repetitions I was finally gliding in clear air, ground speed at a measly twenty kilometers per hour, blue sky above and a few puffy cumulus below me. I glanced at the wing above and was astonished to see its tail a shredded mass of streaming ribbons. It wouldn’t be much of a glider in the soft winds of the eye, that was sure.
From this vantage I could see the inner foot of the eyewall. I had come out about twenty degrees beyond it, close to our planned exit mark by some quirk of fate. I glanced around, hoping to see Jerry’s orange or Mariah’s pink balloons, praying more than a little for a sight of pink, to be honest. Despite the turbulence and buffeting we had planned to exit close by the same position, barring accidents, I added ruefully. I looked around again, saw nothing but clear air.
At this point on my flight plan I should have had my balloon deployed and been drifting gently southwest on the prevailing winds of the eye toward our exit route. Jerry had dreamed up this drifting strategy as a way of giving us some respite and preserving our strength for the effort to break out of the eye. But I had blown that leisurely option. For now I had to ride my torn rogallo to the exit point against the winds, in the opposite direction, overcoming the torn fabric fluttering above me, and fighting my body’s demands for rest. I had to keep away from the eyewall winds, and be alert to the deceiving calm of the weather in the eye the whole time. I would hit my exit point in less than optimal shape; that was sure.