Circumnavigation

Adventurer Steve Fossett piloted his Global- Flyer to a picture-perfect landing here Thursday 67 hours after taking off, becoming the first pilot to circle the globe nonstop, alone and without refueling. Fossett stayed awake by drinking a dozen chocolate protein milkshakes as he set several world records on his more than 23,000-mile mission, registering as the fastest nonstop flight around the world.

Still on a roll after nearly three years and 15,000 miles, Fabrice Gropaiz coasted to a stop Thursday on the Santa Monica Pier to end a trip around the world on in-line skates. The 28-year-old Frenchman, who undertook the unique journey to raise money for AIDS research, chronicled his trip for thousands of readers by filing periodic updates and photographs on the Internet.

After two failed launch attempts, the Earthwinds around-the-world balloon flight was postponed Saturday until November, organizers said. Weather conditions were never just right to start the journey of the high-tech, hourglass-shaped twin balloons. Launch attempts early Saturday and on Feb. 14 were scrubbed because it was too windy, project spokesman William G. Armstrong Jr. said. The three crew members of Earthwinds have been waiting for weeks to attempt the flight.

Voyager pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager received official certification Thursday of their record-breaking December flight, non-stop around the world without refueling. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale, which certifies all aviation speed, altitude and distance records, established the distance traveled by the Mojave-based pilots during their nine-day flight last December at 24,987 miles. In accepting the award in Los Angeles, Rutan, 48, said: "You can only do what you dream about.

Tony Aliengena reached the Soviet Far East's largest northern port Tuesday but braced for one of the most crucial legs on his round-the-world flight, as he moved closer to Alaska and U.S. re-entry. The 11-year-old San Juan Capistrano boy negotiated 312 miles of Pacific coastline to bring his single-engine Cessna to a safe landing at the airport outside Magadan, a fishing port of 185,000 people normally closed to foreigners.

Stefan Leca left Romania with his fiancee, Lavinia Tatar, in August, 1992, to walk around the world. He had $3 in his pocket and wore the first of 50 pairs of shoes. Leca said he was concerned about the money but planned to rely on the thousands of friends he has around the world. Those friends, amateur radio operators, have sustained the couple. They include the Amateur Radio Club of Buena Park.

Sailing history will record that Peter Blake's 84-foot New Zealand ketch Steinlager 2 led the fifth Whitbread Round the World Race almost from the start last Sept. 2, but it has been a lot longer than that. Where history--and most of his competitors--will err, Blake says, is that "the race starts not at the start gun. It starts when you decide to have a boat. "A lot of these people will moan and groan that the race rules aren't fair, but what it falls down to is they didn't do their homework . .

The "Roaring 40s" of the South Atlantic and Indian oceans sprang a trap on three solo sailors in the Globe Challenge around-the-world sailboat race. The bleak, cold, storm-whipped Southern Ocean capsized one boat, dismasted another and crippled a third with a knockdown near 40 degrees south latitude. All three skippers--Frenchmen Philippe Poupon and Jean Yves Terlain and South African Bertie Reed--are out of the 27,000-nautical-mile non-stop race that began Nov.

Eight people, including his family, a Soviet pen pal, a reporter and members of a film crew recording Tony Aliengena's Friendship Flight '89, were aboard his Cessna Centurion when it crashed Tuesday on the runway in Golovin, Alaska: -Tony, 11. -Gary Aliengena, 39, a certified pilot who owns the plane and was at the controls. -Susan Aliengena, 39, Tony's mother, who has been in charge of such logistical details as obtaining the visas for all the Americans on the trip.

U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett was soaring far over the South Atlantic on Sunday, headed for South Africa in his attempt to make the first nonstop trip around the world in a balloon. At 9 a.m. PDT, he had traveled more than 1,900 miles since lifting off from western Argentina on Friday. He was traveling a relatively slow 39 mph at 23,000 feet. His control center at Washington University in St.