Global Circumnavigation for a Good Cause

Two Iowa pilots are currently circumnavigating the globe in a Cessna 210 Centurion for purpose of raising money to eradicate polio (poliomyelitis)—a crippling, paralytic, viral disease which remains very-much-extant and ravages populations worldwide.

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 and have since made stops in New Hampshire, Canada, Iceland, Scotland, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Greece, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia. On 14 July, the pair landed N732WP at Queensland Australia’s Brisbane Airport (BNE), thereby marking the half-way (ish) point of their three-month, 25,000-plus-mile odyssey.

Messrs. Teahen and Ockenfels 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—a 1977 Cessna 210M Centurion.

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.

After landing in Brisbane, Teahen and Ockenfels visited a memorial to Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, an Australian aviation pioneer who, in 1928, piloted a Fokker F.VII/3m monoplane dubbed Southern Cross from Oakland, California to Brisbane, Australia, thereby earning the distinction of being the first man to make a transpacific flight. The three-leg, 6,245-nautical-mile, 82-hour (three-day, ten-hour) flight made a hero of Kingsford Smith and landed his face on the Australian twenty-dollar note for several decades.

While visiting the Kingsford Smith memorial, Mr. Teahen remarked: "To see what Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew achieved by navigating by the stars is truly remarkable. We have GPS today, which pinpoints our location anywhere on Earth. … If our flight was relying on the stars to get home we'd be in a lot of trouble."

Since touching down in Darwin on 27 June, Teahen and Ockenfels have urged the well-traveled Centurion to Cairns (where Teahen was briefly hospitalized after contracting a reportedly travel-related ailment), Toowoomba, and Brisbane. The pair is scheduled to depart the antipodes on 15 July and commence the long, eastbound Pacific crossing back to the United States.

The intrepid aviators plan to touch-down in Iowa on 30 July. Upon doing so, 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."

Though nearing its end, Teahen’s and Ockenfel’s journey remains a daunting endeavor. The upcoming Pacific crossing will see the pair on the wing for upwards of 15-hours per-day as they island-hop across the world’s largest, most obliquely-named ocean. Fuel and rest stops are planned in New Caledonia, Fiji, American Samoa, Hawaii, California, and Colorado.

At each stop, local Rotary Club members have joined the pair in fundraisers. To date, the flight has raised more than $1-million for polio prevention. One-hundred-percent of the monies raised by Teahen’s and Ockenfel’s global circumnavigation will be donated to the Rotary Foundation’s 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. 

FMI: www.flighttoendpolio.com