I know it has seen like a long time since we updated, but unfortunately nothing happens fast when you are trying to squeeze water from a stone, or in our case, fuel from Sri Lanka.

The recent event of April 25th, 2007 the Tamil Tiger rebel warplanes dropping bombs on a Sri Lankan military base in the north of the country, and two planes attacking an air strip, apparently, though the military denied this happened, has not helped the situation that came after less than a month previous; Tamil Tiger light aircraft flew from the north to the capital on the south-western coast and bombed an air base that shares runways with the Colombo airport.  This action caused the runway to be shut down, and any general aviation to come to a grinding halt.  Commercial flights were suspended for at least a month.  Since then, on June 28th, Sri Lankan soldiers killed 11 Tamil Tiger rebels and bombed a rebel base in the north.  This is an unfortunate truth in this region, as fighting has been a constant thing as the Tamil Tigers try to gain their independence.

This has caused our headway of obtaining fuel to be cut off, and we have since had to start from square one of obtaining fuel from Singapore.  Though I’m sure it’s fine to fly into Colombo when they allow GA to return, we feel that it isn’t worth the risk.  At this moment, we are attempting to source enough fuel to reach Phuket direct from Male.

On a separate note, the plane has been ready to go for sometime, waiting patiently for our return.  If I had it my way, I would have loved to stay put in the Maldives for 6 months unit this whole thing was sorted, but alas, we all had to return to work to make this whole thing possible.

Thank you for checking back with us!  The Circle the Earth team