Didn't quite go as planned today but before I get to that I thought I'd let you know that I've changed my round-the-world ticket. I'm not going to Fiji at all now and I've delayed my departure from Auckland by a month. As it stands now I leave Auckland on 24th May and fly direct to Los Angeles.

I met Dave tonight for a drink. He is leaving tomorrow morning so I won't get a chance to catch up again. Next week Dave leaves for the next leg of his trip. We had a great evening and it was so good to catch up on the gossip and spend some time together. We are going to try to meet up again in the States somewhere.

OK. On to the latest skydiving installment. It all went really, really well today apart from one tiny little problem: I didn't open my parachute! Now, obviously it did open otherwise I wouldn't be sending this email! I decided when I started telling you all about this a few days ago that I'll tell you exactly what happens and not keep anything back so that you know that when I say something went well I mean it.

Just to put this in perspective: This is all pretty safe. The rigs that are used today are really safe. The instructors have thousands of jumps and years of experience under their belts. You learn to be really careful about doing the safety checks. No one is allowed to do anything they aren't ready for and the instructors are there to make sure everything is OK. After each jump your Jump Master talks to the guy who is in overall charge of the Drop Zone (Keith) and they decide what you're doing next. You have an audible altimeter in your helmet that will beep very, very loudly if you're still falling too fast at (in our case) 3,000 feet. Even if you ignore that, there is a fail-safe Automatic Activation Device that will release the reserve chute at something like 1,500 feet if you are still falling too fast (no, that's not what happened today - I'm getting to that).

I was only going to get in one jump again today so I got picked up about 1pm. There were loads of tandem jumps and solo sport jumpers today so I was going on the second load to go up.

I went through the jump plan with Damon and we spent ages practicing on the ground, including how to do controlled 360 degree turns. The first load up had to wait ages at 12,000 feet for clearnance from the airport ground control to jump. Then it was time for me to go. I get very quiet when the plane is coming round to park infront of the hangar! We practiced the exit again on the ground and then up we went. Every time I go up I'm finding that the nerves are starting later and later, today they didn't kick in until about 8,000 feet. We did the checks and talked through the jump plan. One of the sport jumpers was out first, followed by Lorraine. Damon told me to go to the door. I was very positive about getting to the door today - no problems at all. Damon's on my right, inside the plane holding me. I look to my right and shout "OK!". "OK!" he shouts back. I look forward to where I'm gripping the door frame. UP, DOWN - JUMP! Two deep breaths and check to my right for corrections to my body position. My arms are fine but Damon signals that I need to straighten my legs. I check my height and Damon flies in front of me.

The idea is to keep him in front of me. This is the heading and hover control that I've been having trouble with. It's fantastic. He moves, I move. I keep him right where I should. For the first time I can actually feel myself balanced on the wind and when I want to move I can feel what I'm doing. It's a bit like learning to drive a car: there comes a point when you stop thinking "I want the car to turn right so I'll turn the steering wheel to the right and the car will move and then I'll straighten the steering wheel and the car will straighten up again". After a while you just think about which way you want to go and you do and it feels like you and the car are turning together. Well, something like that but perhaps you can see what I'm getting at. This was great because I could actually feel that I had control over which way I was going. Damon was grinning all over his face. Then he gave me the signal to do a complete 360 dgree turn to my right. So, I start to turn. At about what I thought was half way round I straighten up. I'm still turning, which is what is supposed to happen. Then into my view comes Damon so as he comes level with me I turn the other way to stop my motion and I end up with him right in front of me. He looks really happy and gives me a thumbs-up and then signals to do a 360 the other way round. This is interesting as just as I loose him from sight we start falling through cloud. I suddenly have no point of reference but I slow when I think I should and then there he is and I get him right infront of me. He looks really, really happy. I check my height and it's about 6,000 feet. I keep checking my height and as I approach 5,000 I give the two hand flashes. Damon is still smilling and giving me the thumbs up. I am feeling really happy and really pleased and really comfortable.

As I approach 4,000 feet it's time to deploy and this is where things just went completely cr*p. I brought my left hand in to in front of my head as I moved my right hand out and back to the pilot chute toggle at the right-hand side of the base of my rig. Apart from the very first practice pull on the first jump I have hit the handle first time, every time. This time I can't find it. Then I feel myslef tip forward. It's been drummed into me that you should only deploy when you are in level (belly to the ground) flight as if you are leaning forward or backwards it can cause all sorts of problems. So I arch and stablise and go for the deploy again. I still can't find it. Now what I should have done at this point is find the BIG ring at the top of my hip on that side where the leg harness joins up together. It's really big and you can't miss it. Then you slide your hand down from the ring and you will find the toggle along that strap. Unfortunatley I'd got a bit suprised at not finding the handle first time and on my second attempt I let my head drop forward which lost the good arch that I'd been holding that then made me unstable and I started to "porpoise" which is where you start to rock up and down. At this point Damon flew in and deployed my chute for me. I was SO angry with myself.

"One thousand, two thousand, three thousand" I shout and look up to check the canopy. Oh, great. Sod's Law. I've got twisted cables and as a result the canopy isn't fully open. Not bad but several turns of twist in the lines. So I grab the risers above my shoulders, pull them apart and do scissor kicks to spin me the other way to untwist it. At this point my audible altimeter goes off in my ear (3,000 feet). The cables untwist and the canopy opens. I swore continuosly for about 1,500 feet! Good job my radio isn't switched to two-way otherwise everyone would have heard a stream of, not exactly poilte, language.

I fly in and get down fine. Keith just asks if I'm alright. "Yes thanks I'm ******* fine. Did you see what happened?".

Damon couldn't do my de-brief straight away as he had another tamdem to take up. As I got into the hanger he just smiled and asked "What was all that about?". I reply that I have no ******* idea.". He says that we won't worry about it too much. I get out of the rig and go and get a coffee and a smoke - several. I feel really, really annoyed and angry with myself. It takes ages for Damon to finish the tandems. Lorraine is worried that I'm upset but I tell her I'm not - I'm just very angry with myself and need to fume for a bit to get it out of my system. The rest of the jump had been so, so good.

The de-brief was really good. Apart from the obvious, Damon is delighted with what I did in the dive. My control was good and my 360s were very good: smooth and under control. He is suprised about the problem with the deploy. He knows that I can hit it every time. We talked a bit about it and I think I worked out what happened. Because I'm getting better at stuff, when I did the 5,000 feet hand flash I had more time than I am used to. Up to now, by the time I've done the hand flash it's time to go straight into the deploy. Things have gone really well today so I'm still just under 5,000 after the flash. I'm also really over the moon with the way the rest of the jump went. It just happened that I missed the handle first time. Because I don't normally miss, it came as a shock so I lost body position. On the second attempt I let my head move forward because I was more concerend about finding the handle and that caused all the problems. Perhaps it might have been better if I'd had had more problems finding the handle in earlier jumps and then I'd have not been so put-out about it with the problems that the reslutant suprise cause.

Well, much to my surprise, although I haven't passed Stage Five, tomorrow I'm doing what Damon describes as an "Advanced Stage Five" jump. Basically it's the same as today but we introduce a "wave-off". This is a wave of my hands over each other before I deploy which warns anyone near me that I'm going to deploy. It's what skydivers do to let others know to move away. Actually, I've just checked on my list of stages and the wave-off isn't supposed to be introduced until Stage Seven! And if that weren't good enough, we are going to do an "un-linked" exit. That means that when I jump tomorrow Damon isn't going to be holding on to me. He will let me jump and then dive out after me. I'm very pleased as I really want to find out what it feels like to jump out on my own. Damon will still be there during the dive and I don't think I'll have that kind of deployment problem again!!!!!!!

I'm still over the moon - it's just a shame about the deploy!

I'll let you know how "Advanced Stage Five" goes tomorrow.

Ian.