Cromarty departed the Odemira area at 11am on 17th September and flew south. At 12.24 he headed out over the Alvor estuary, east of Lagos in southern Portugal. At the start of his Atlantic Ocean flight he was over 1000 metres above sea level and this high flying continued for an hour before he dropped down to 100 metres. His flight path was west of the Moroccan mainland so he flew on through the night, being 100km west of Marrakesh at 03.58GMT on 18th September. His track finally veered towards the Africa landmass and at 09.10 he came ashore near Cap Draa in southern Morocco. During the night he was flying over the sea at 500 metres asl but was down 50 metres when he reached the coast. His over-water flight was 990 km and when he reached land he did not rest but turned down the coast before quite quickly heading over the Sahara Desert. He flew another 500 km before stopping for the night in the desert south of the NW corner of Mauritania. In the two day flight he covered 1546 km in 31 hours 20 mins – at a speed of 49km/hr. Cromarty has completed two long distance over water flights – I wonder if that’s what he did on his first two migrations to Africa.
September 17th -18th
