Matt Silver-Vallance planned and executed a bold stunt to raise funds for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund. He took off from Robben Island using just helium balloons and found himself floating as high as Table Mountain.

According to Mail&Guardian:

The float turned out scarier than anticipated, Silver-Vallance said afterwards.

A change in wind speed and direction threw a spanner in the works.

“I was going up … then I started coming down again, that’s when it got hairy again,” said Silver-Vallance.

Matt Silver-Vallance – goofing around

South African born Silver-Vallance, who is a medical industry professional, landed safely after floating from Robben Island to the mainland using a cluster of helium filled balloons.

He carried out the stunt in an attempt to raise R10-million for the building of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital.

A lot of interest has been building around how he would actually control the altitude of his flying machine – as it wouldn’t be like a hot-air balloon which let’s you control things using the gas fire below. In this case, Silver-Vallance used a pellet gun to shoot and pop the balloons above his ‘rig.’ But that didn’t work very well:

The plan was to use 200 balloons but after expert advice Silver-Vallance took off with 160 balloons.

The balloons floated to higher altitudes than expected, making the man dubbed ‘Balloon Bloke’ a little nervous.

“I got to about one thousand feet [above sea level], about the height of Table Mountain,” he said.

Silver-Vallance tried to pop some balloons but the pellets just bounced off them.

He had to resort to spearing about 35 balloons, leaving him exhausted.

Silver-Vallance ended up landing slightly short of his goal.

Silver-Vallance eventually dropped a rope and was pulled down to a sea rescue craft following his trajectory.

He waved excitedly at journalists in a navy vessell, as the rubber duck he was travelling in passed by.

The navy sounded four fog horns to congratulate him for his achievement.

His feat was not a complete failure as his landing place was only a few hundred metres from where his balloon journey was meant to end.

Asked whether he was disappointed, he said he was just glad to be safe.

He did however add: “Would we do it again? Probably not.”

[more here]

Bless!

Well from everyone here at 2oceansvibe, a big congrats to Silver-Vallance and his team for putting in such a great effort.

Click here for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.