11th April 1922 – Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho are in Cape Verde.
They arrived in S. Vicente on April 5, 1922, coming from the Canary Islands.
Sacadura Cabral was deeply worried:
“By day countless telegrams of congratulations have been received and at night we think about the dead end we seem to be in.”
Better than anyone knows, after two long legs, that the excessive consumption of the engine will not allow them to make the “Great Leap”: Cape Verde – Fernando de Noronha, estimated at 16 hours of flight.
The night of today’, April 11, is the real reason for the departure from Lisbon on March 30, 1922.
It is the full moon night they needed to fly all night and arrive at dawn at Fernando de Noronha.
They already know that they will not do that.
They still don’t know, today, what they will do to reach Brazil.
Today, in 2020, the sky is totally clear and starry in Lisbon. At the time of this post, Ursa Minor is at the Zenith, almost vertical to us, while Orion is about to set. A planet (Venus?) is shining brightly.
Gago Coutinho would have known which planet it was, for sure.
So much we still have to learn from these two Heroes!
They still don’t know what they will do or how they will do it, but they have with them one absolute certainty – they will fly.
Like them, in Project Lusitania 100, our decision is also to face the unknown: with caution, but never with fear. – JMF