Piccard and Borschberg took off from Abu Dhabi on 9 March 2015. The multi–stage journey was scheduled to end back in Abu Dhabi in August (five months later). The longest leg, from Japan to Hawaii, was completed in June 2015, but battery damage sustained in that leg took months to repair and the circumnavigation was not resumed until April 2016. Stopping off in California, it reached New York City in June 2016, and Spain later that month. It then stopped in Egypt, eventually returning to Abu Dhabi on 26 July 2016 – 16 months and 17 days after leaving.
Without the ten–month break in Hawaii, the journey time would have been six months – only one month longer than planned.
© Haydn Thompson 2020