Global Circumnavigation in the Home Stretch

After traveling more than 25,000 miles and visiting upwards of twenty nations for purpose of raising both awareness of polio and funds to combat the crippling viral disease, pilots Peter Teahen and John Ockenfels have landed their jointly-owned Cessna 210 Centurion at Southern California’s French Valley Airport (RBK)—the penultimate stop on the pair’s all-but-actualized global circumnavigation.

Following their 26 July arrival at RBK, which serves the communities of Murrieta and Temecula, California, Messrs. Teahen and Ockenfels—longtime Rotarians, both—attended a fundraiser hosted by the Rotary Club of Temecula in Murrieta.

Rotary Club of Temecula President Shane Lesovsky set forth in a news release: “Rotary’s fight to eradicate polio is one of our longest standing and most significant efforts.”

To date, Teahen and Ockenfels have raised north of $1-million for the Rotary Foundation Polio Plus Program. What’s more, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has pledged to give two-dollars for every one-dollar donated to the flight and the cause it champions. 

By the time Teahen and Ockenfels return to Cedar Rapids, Iowa—their odyssey’s beginning and end point and home, more or less, to both—the intrepid aviators will have traveled more than 27,000 miles and made 39 stops in 21 countries, and attended 24 fundraising events organized to help eradicate polio.

Peter Teahen, a Cedar Rapids funeral home director, and John Ockenfels, the retired CEO of an Iowa City recycling concern, departed Cedar Rapids’s Eastern Iowa Airport (CID) on 05 May 2023 in N732WP, a 1977 Cessna 210M Centurion.

The pair intended, originally, to undertake the flight in a Piper Lance II (PA-32RT-300), a six-seat, high-performance, single engine machine, the later iterations of which were designated Saratoga. The pair’s plan to depart in 2020 was curtailed by a virus, however, and during the ensuing and protracted period of downtime, Teahen and Ockenfels jointly purchased N732WP.

Faster and higher-flying than the Lance II, the Centurion is powered by a 310-horsepower Continental TSIO-520-R, turbocharged, flat-six-cylinder engine turning a three-blade, constant-speed, seven-foot-six-inch-diameter McCauley propeller. So motivated, the 210M manages a maximum speed of 204-knots and a service-ceiling of FL270. Unlike its 210N descendant, the 210M is not a pressurized aircraft.

The Centurion’s greater speed, higher service-ceiling, and greater range enabled Teahen and Ockenfels to embark on a longer, safer trip than was possible in the Lance II. Additionally, N732WP is retrofitted with auxiliary wing-tip and aft-ventral fuel tanks by which its endurance is extended to approximately 19-hours.

Upon returning to Cedar Rapids, Teahen and Ockenfels will join an august fraternity of only seven-hundred pilots who’ve flown around the wide world in single-engine aircraft.

Teahen, in point of fact, envisaged the global flight a solo undertaking, but was prevailed upon by his wife to recruit a second pilot with whom to share the adventure—and the danger. Ergo, Ockenfels was enlisted to partake in the noble madness.

"We've been trying to do this flight for four years,” Teahen explained. “We were ready to go in 2020, but ten days before launch COVID-19 broke out. In 2021 COVID canceled us a second time, and last year we were ready to depart and fly via Russia when the invasion of Ukraine occurred. So this flight has been a long time coming."

FMI: www.flighttoendpolio.com