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Pertaining to the last episode of season 6:

If they flew along with Daenerys' fleet, then how were they able to fly for so long without eating or resting (since there is nowhere to rest and the only thing to eat would have maybe been a few fish)? Even if they stopped somewhere later on the journey, they couldn't stop anywhere going around Old Valyria, which is quite a distance to fly, especially if you consume as much energy as a dragon does.

Does this mean that the dragons took a different route, maybe one over land? But then how did they know where to go and stuff? How did the know what speed to fly at to meet them where they did. Their route is much shorter and dragons fly faster than ships sail, so how did this all work?

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    Why assume they are incapable of prolonged flight?
    – Catija
    Jun 30, 2016 at 6:08
  • It would be days at a time that they would have been in the air. That said, migrating birds seem to manage fine.
    – user56reinstatemonica8
    Jun 30, 2016 at 9:41
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    If I remember the map correctly, only the last part of the voyage involves crossing the narrow sea. So the dragons can just fly ahead and a little north to the coast, rest there for the night and rejoin the fleet later. Also I dimly recall dragons eating fish from the water in a prior season, but they could just feed over land the same way they rest.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Jun 30, 2016 at 11:37
  • @ToddWilcox This should be an answer. Probably the best that's available right now.
    – kuhl
    Jun 30, 2016 at 15:34
  • They could probably land on the deck or rails of one of the larger shisp
    – Skooba
    Jul 1, 2016 at 2:38

3 Answers 3

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The answer to this question is basically four parts, (1) size of the straight in question, (2) the starting point of the voyage and (3) route taken (4) Speed of the ships. Lets look at all of these. Please reference this map for details on the answers given.

  1. There is not any proper distance given (that I know of) so we can assume a long or short distance at will. I personally don't like this one either but it stands.
  2. On the provided map you will see that on the staring point Bay of Dragons (formerly Slavers bay) is on the south size of the continent so there will be some time of sailing near the mainland giving the dragons opportunity to rest as needed.
  3. If you notice on the map above, there is a chain on small islands between the closest points (Sunspear and Lys) to the suoth. So the dragons would not even need to fly the whole trip at once.
  4. Ships of this type would be extremely slow compared to the quick flight of a dragon. If we want to be overly generous about the ships used and say that they could move at the speed of a Caravel, that is still only an average of 4 knots, so a several weeks - months trip via ship would be much shorter days or less. If we assume a meager 45 MPH (72.4 KPH) for the dragons it would take a ship 10 hours to travel what a dragon would in 1. So even if we put a distance between the to continents at 350 miles (563 KPH) a dragon would make the trip in 8 hours and still have time to stop for coffee on the way, the fleet would on the other hand need 76 hours, if the weather was favorable.
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  • Dragons don't need to stop for coffee, since they can keep their coffee warm be breathing on it.
    – DJClayworth
    Aug 17, 2016 at 19:02
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    Are we sure that’s a reasonable estimate for the air-speed velocity of an unladen dragon?
    – Paul D. Waite
    Jul 31, 2017 at 7:22
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While we haven't been shown it yet, what's to say they are unable to land on the water (like birds) and float/rest a while before taking flight again? And as for eating, we saw at either the close of season 2 or beginning of season 3, on the voyage from Quarth to Astapor, that the dragons even then were capable of diving for fish.

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  • Or maybe they can fly for thousands of miles without stopping, like the wandering albatross?
    – Andres F.
    Jul 15, 2016 at 4:42
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Regarding food, whales etc. The notion that there would only be "a few fish" is ridiculously unlikely. We saw in season 2 that the dragons could dive, swim and fish. The sea likely teams with large schools of fish, with fish that weigh hundreds and even thousands of pounds (tuna, sharks etc.), and, of course, with whales, which can weigh tens or even more than one hundred thousand pounds. The Dragons could kill a large whale (without even having to dive, since whales have to surface for air), and float on the carcass while eating parts of it. If anything, I expect the dragons to grow more than ever while crossing the sea, due to the marine diet offering much greater abundance and much larger/fatter prey than land. Blue whale calfs gain 100 pounds a day on their mother's milk alone.

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