London to Auckland

Since the London-Auckland ride ended many people have asked if there is going to be a book. My response has always been that I couldn’t get interested in writing about something that didn’t have a happy ending. It would be a struggle, in spite of all the interesting things we did and saw, to write in an inspiring manner. So the answer has been “probably not”.

You will probably remember that one of our riders was Ivan Otulic from Croatia. Ivan was the World Record holder for the longest PWC ride in 24hours. I heard a lot about that record during the ride and although I was impressed, I had always thought that it was beatable. So when Ivan and I parted at the end of the big ride with a little bit of bad blood between us, I stored away the possibility of having a crack at the record at some later date.

After a few months of soul searching about the big ride I started to think of ways to get some more publicity for our ‘early detection of cancer saves lives’ message and decided to have a go at Ivan’s record. I also wanted to use this as a way of getting some more publicity for our loyal sponsors who had been short changed a few months earlier.

I talked to Seadoo who were keen and to my good mate Mark Cole who agreed to lead the team. We initially planned the attempt for 20th December 2010 as this is the shortest night of the year in New Zealand and also a full moon. Eventually we ran out of time and decided to postpone it until 2011 to get better organized.

We spent a great deal of time analyzing the best place to attempt the record. Considerations included the weather, likely water conditions, refueling and the ability to monitor the event to the extent required by Guinness World Records. The end result was that Karapiro NZ was selected as the best option. We then applied for permission to close the lake and use it for the 24 hour period from 4pm Monday 7th Feb to 4pm Tuesday 8th Feb.

One of the rules for the Guinness record is that you can’t hot swap machines every refuel to save time. A backup machine can only be used in case of the mechanical failure of the first machine. This means that refueling procedures are critical. In the event we were refueling every 50-55 minutes. Fuel consumption was around 67 liters per hour on the Seadoo GTX 260 IS.

Another rule is that the machine must be stock standard out of the showroom. No high speed impellors, no mixture adjustments. Stock standard!!

While all the preparation was going on I continued my regime of gym workouts that included weights, core and stretching and did a lot of bike riding. I spent 22 hours running in and testing the two machines as well.
One of the invaluable things that I have learned from all my PWC adventures is what gear works the best and that proved to be an advantage again for this ride. I slowly gathered the best gear possible until it was ‘the ultimate kit’. I won’t give you a full list but I can tell you that a wet suit is not on it. I prefer ‘skins’ as they are a compression garment and they breath. The list did include the best safety gear for the night riding including a helmet and back brace.

The night before the start our team of 15 volunteers turned up at Karapiro. We the marked the course with buoys, measured it by GPS and did some practice night laps. It was a good thing we did because I soon discovered that the top end of the course was as black as the inside of a cow’s stomach. There was no moon and being out in the country, there was no residual light from surrounding built up areas. This end of the course was also very tight as the lake narrows at the turning point to just over 100m wide. We would need to put a lot more marker lights on the bank so that I would not get completely disoriented in the turns.

On the day of the actual event I tried to sleep in the morning while the team got everything ready. The attempt at sleep was mostly unsuccessful but at least I rested. At 2pm we had a team brief and then got ready to start. The team of 15 was ready by 3.45pm and the three support boats were stationed at various points around the course.
At 4pm, with a minimum of ceremony, I started. The day lap involved using full throttle on the IS 260 without a break except for the refueling stops. I was making good ground and averaging 105km per hour while running including the turns. So by the time night came at around 8.45pm I had already covered about 470km. That was the easy bit. The night riding was no fun at all. I had to use visual cues from lights on the bank and support boats. I had a chart plotter GPS but even that was useless as on the lowest light setting, if I looked at it, it would destroy my night vision for 30 seconds so I stopped looking at it all together. I did over 80 night laps. Each one was an exercise in intense concentration. I got into a fairly good rhythm but I never got comfortable. By far the scariest part of the lap was at the top end turning point where each time I would come screaming in at high speed, talking to myself and urging myself to ‘concentrate or you’re dead’. I would go hard until I saw the turning buoy flash down my port side then I would instantly throttle off, throw the machine into a hard 180 turn and accelerate out again at full throttle heading for a red light on a pylon 2km down the track. There is something about screaming along in the pitch black with no lights at up to 110km per hour having to trust your instincts about where all the obstacles are and hoping there are no logs in the water. It’s surreal and at times I thought I was hallucinating. A combination of red bull, coffee and adrenaline worked for me. I never felt tired that night but when the sun came up I felt wasted.

Daylight was surely welcome and by now I wasn’t far off Ivan’s record but without the adrenaline rush I became very tired and it was a real struggle to stay awake. More coffee, more red bull and some sports supplements helped but it was a major effort.

Success, however, has a way of rejuvenating people and at around 9.20am I broke Ivan’s record of 1641km with 6 hours 40 minutes to spare. Both I and the team were ecstatic about this and every one’s moods perked up as we set about adding some distance to the new record. The next six hours were some of the longest I have ever experienced but eventually 4pm came and it was all over. I was so tired that the video shows me riding up without emotion and stopping to take a photo of the distance made good on the GPS for the record. I had covered 2,288km in 24 hours.

I owe a lot to my team for this record. Mark Cole for his great leadership and his hourly briefings to me at each refuel. Matt Kneesh who kept the mechanical side going. The refueling team, including my son Jamie and my old mate Colin Bower who was responsible for introducing me to skis. John Ballinger who looked after video and record keeping. My wife Manola and Rae Bower who catered for the whole team. Dan Mickleson who did the photography and everything else as well. The guys on the support boats who were always there for me. Kevin Geard for his advice. They were all magnificent. There was not one time when I wished they had done something better. This is your record too guys.

The Seadoo GTX 260IS was magnificent as well with its intelligent suspension, S3 hull and ultra-comfortable seat it was a pleasure to ride, even for 24 hours.

You’re probably wondering how I was at the end of the ride. Well there wasn’t too much physical damage but I was so tired from the concentration that having completely run down my immune system, I got sick and for the next week I dreamed night laps all night while sleeping. It was a nightmare. Apart from that I’m fine and am already thinking about what to do next!! And I hope this is an example to anyone who thinks that they are too old to attempt something. I’m 52. Just do it!!

Greetings.

First I must apologize for not updating you until now. But until now I really wasn’t in the mood for talking about the ride on this forum. It took quite a while to come to grips with the way it all ended and some issues are still causing grief. I have spent a great deal of time analyzing what went wrong, talking to people, and generally working through it. So this blog will tell you what we have all been up to since Santorini and then attempt to sum up where we went wrong, what we did right and what we achieved.

What happened afterwards? The three of us were discharged from hospital in Santorini after some routine checks and we found some pleasant accommodation. Luckily we had salvaged our passports and wallets so we weren’t in too bad shape. We were obliged to stay on the island for a few days while the coastguard searched for the Seadoos and a few other items of housekeeping were sorted out. Then we headed by Ferry to Venice. Oto went home to Croatia from there and Travis was met by his girlfriend Greta and spent two months travelling around Europe. I trained it to south west France near Toulouse and went walking on the Camino de Santiago which is a pilgrimage walk that starts in many parts of Europe and ends up in north west Spain. I was then joined by my family in Europe and we holidayed up there for three weeks. Since then I have returned to work and have been dealing with the winding up and aftermath of the event.

Where did we go wrong? To be honest it all started as an idea. The original challenge was to see if I could get enough interest to get it to the start line. This turned out to be fairly easy because everyone likes a great adventure and it was for a damn good cause. I formed a good team but unfortunately some key members jumped ship in the last few months for valid personal reasons and I got left to basically run it on my own which, looking back, was an impossible task. There just weren’t enough hours in the days. As a consequence I arrived at the start line exhausted and the organizational side suffered.

They say you make your own luck and I believe it but you would have to agree that we had an inordinate amount of bad luck along the way. For my part, I am guilty of being too optimistic and trusting. E.g. the logistics of riding the part of the ride from Cairo through to Australia were a nightmare and probably would have been even tougher than anyone would have imagined. I am now convinced that it would be impossible to do it without a million dollars and a naval escort. We were always underfunded, we demanded too much of our Seadoos and I underestimated the logistical requirements. If we had have kept going we would have ended up in grave danger at some point and the mission probably wouldn’t have had the relatively safe and happy ending that it actually did.

What did we achieve? We actually achieved a lot with the ‘Early Detection of Cancer’ message and although we were usually late, we had some productive cooperation with, and got a lot of publicity for, the Cancer organizations that we worked with along the way. We met some great people…oh and I nearly forgot, we rode our Seadoos from London to the bottom of Turkey through the rivers of Europe, and that’s pretty cool.

Who would I like to thank? All the team, the sponsors, particularly Gerry Ryan from Jayco, the good people at AON insurance brokers and Vero Marine who insured us and later paid out so that now we can look at making a sizeable donation to cancer(when the accounts are finalized), all the great people who helped us along the way, the police and authorities who smoothed our path through different countries, all those people who, year after year put in such great work in the field of cancer and you for being great supporters and encouraging us even after it all went wrong.

Where to now? A lot of people are asking for a book. It’s a possibility. There are certainly plenty of interesting things to write about. I don’t see it as being a book about a failure or a chance to lay blame. A lot of the blame lies with me anyway. It would just be the story of what happened and that would be enough.
Another adventure? Maybe but probably not on such a grand scale.
Finding ways to keep the message out there? Absolutely.
I’ll keep you posted.

Ultimate Ride Team Rescued by Greek Air force.

At c.1.30pm on 31st August Jeremy Burfoot, Travis Donoghue and Ivan Otulic were rescued by Greek Air force helicopter about 60km south east of Santorini in the Aegean Sea.

The three men set out at 5am from the island of Karpathos with the intention of making Santorini before a predicted worsening of the weather in the region.
By 8am they had made the half way point but the weather worsened and they found themselves riding into 60-70km per hour winds and battling 3-4m waves almost head on.

Burfoot said that progress was slowed to about 15km per hour and their Seadoos were taking immense punishment, often being completely submerged by waves.The machines were slowly taking on water as their forward speed was inadequate for the venturi bilge system to work well. Auxiliary bilge pumps that the team had installed all failed because of the extreme conditions. Eventually the first machine started having multiple problems because of the hull being full of water. While this was being dealt with, the second Seadoo succumbed to the same problems and the third was showing signs of distress.

At around 10.30am the team made the decision to set off their GME PLB (personal locater beacons) and waited for rescue.

They were pulled from the water by a Greek Air Force helicopter around 1.30pm with no injuries except cuts and bruises and sunburn.

Burfoot said that any suggestion that the Seadoos were to blame were totally incorrect. “No PWC (personal water craft) is designed for hours and hours of that sort of punishment. Under the circumstances I can’t speak highly enough about the handling and ride of the S3 Hull, especially given the weights of gear and equipment we were carrying.”

“The GME beacons were life savers”.
The new 406 GPS equiped beacons that are not much bigger than a mobile phone sent a GPS position accurate to within 10m direct to the Rescue Coordination Center in Wellington New Zealand.The RCC contacted the Greek authorities and the helicopter was directed straight to the three men.They were lifted to nearby Santorini, taken to hospital for a check up and then later discharged.

Burfoot said that the team would like to thank the Greek Air force team and the Coastguard team on Santorini for their professionalism and helpful and friendly attitude.

The men will remain in Santorini for the next few days to deal with formalities.They plan to continue their mission of promoting healthy living and early detection of cancer by other means.

This post in memory of Douglas John Ell and Vanessa Margaret Beare

Dear Friends/Supporters

You have probably noticed that not much info has been forthcoming in the past few days. I apologize for that but there is a very good reason. We did make the south coast of Turkey at Fenike two days ago but since then there have been some major changes. I have been waiting until now to tell you all as I didn’t quite know what to say.

It is with a heavy heart that I inform you that The Jayco Ultimate ride has been called off. There are a number of reasons for this and in no particular order they are:
1. Even though Seadoo are still the best PWC brand in the world, they are not designed to take the continuous punishment that we have subjected them to with our hectic schedule and the modifications that we made to them. We found that we were continually losing time for maintenance and struggling to get spare parts in out of the way places. As a result we were getting further and further behind. When a fuel leak developed in my long range tank, effectively ruling out long open water crossings, we knew we couldn’t make Australia in the time I have available. The sponsored money from Jayco was always conditional on us reaching Australia as Jayco is an Australian Company with nothing to gain from exposure outside Australia and NZ so we offered it back on this basis and the offer was accepted. We have always struggled financially with the ride and this situation became unacceptable as a result. We are all in too much debt already.

2. Due to a rise in tentions in Yemen the NZ department of Foregn Affairs has strenuously warned us not to proceed south of Egypt unattended. The risk of terrorist and pirate attacks in Yemen has risen to an unacceptable level and we would be a prime target.

We all have families and it woul be unfair to put their futures at risk for an adventure, even with such a good cause.

So friends, I am sorry if you feel we have let you down. I and my team have worked hard on this ride for three years now and we are absolutely beside ourselves with disappointment.

Keep spreading the healthy living message and early detection of cancer message. I will be. Even if we have saved only one life with it, all of this will have been worthwhile.

We are now in Rhodos in Greece riding north to Croatia where Ivan lives so that the skis can be returned to BRP. By the time we get there we will have covered some 8000km.

Regards
Jeremy

We’re still here. Hoping the parts will arrive today. If they do we ‘ll be off on a mission tomorrow to make Cairo by Saturday afternoon so watch the tracker.
Cheers
J

What would you do if stuck in north western Turkey waiting for parts?

The answer was obvious to us so we hired a car and visited the Gallipoli Peninsular. This is the site of a major battle in 1915 between Commonwealth forces and the Turks in an attempt to control shipping in the Dardanelles and force Turkey out of the war.

We visited most sites including ANZAC Cove where the Kiwis and Aussies came ashore. In a few short futile months, 37,000 Commonwealth soldiers including 2,700 kiwis, 10,000 Aussies and over 20,000 British were killed. Countless more young Turkish boys lost their lives. Nothing was achieved there except deaths and misery. Mothers should not let their sons go to fight other peoples wars.

J

Most of you will be aware that this ride was seriously underfunded from the start. But we persevered because it’s a great cause and we were optimistic that more funding would come.

But until yesterday that wasn’t the case and with expenses on our credit cards reaching their limits, I put out an emergency call to my good friend Gerry Ryan from Jayco. I am pleased to say that Gerry has agreed to help by making another significant contribution. It won’t fix our credit cards but it will keep us going and we won’t have to sell our houses. We greatly appreciate Gerry and Jayco’s contribution. As a result we have renamed the ride, ‘The Jayco Ultimate Ride’.

If you are in the market fora RV or caravan, check out Jayco products first and support our sponsor.
J

We had asked the boys from Aqua Motors who had done the service to pick us up from our hotel at 6.45am for a 7am departure, but they were late so we caught a cab to the marina thinking they might be there waiting. They weren’t. They were now waiting outside our hotel. We couldn’t leave because they had some of our gear. Hence our 7am departure became 8.40am.

Once we got going we had been riding for about an hour in reasonable but windy conditions when suddenly Ivan’s machine hit a bigger wave and the damage to his nose area got worse and he started to take on water. This meant a dash into the closest marina and a two hour delay while Ivan got materials for and carried out the repair.

Once back on the water we adopted a strategy of sticking close to the north coast of the Sea of Marmara to reduce the effect that the howling northerly wind could have on the waves. This worked to an extent but was still uncomfortable. For those of you who are interested I am going to give you instructions to follow so that you can experience the same feeling. The rest of you can go and make a cup of tea or do something useful. Here goes….oh and you will need five helpers so perhaps you can take turns.

Look in the yellow pages for your local ‘mechanical bull’ shop(but be quick as they won’t have enough stock for all of you). Purchase the bull and give it a name…..no, not Greg or Ross, something like Brutus. Mount the bull on a sturdy concrete pad in a wind tunnel in your yard. Set the wind tunnel to blow at an effective speed of 80-90kph from your 2 o’clock. Now get on the bull and set it on the variable speed function. For the next 8-12 hours you ride the bull. Friend one starts your lawnmower nearby and revs it up and down continuously. Friend two squirts a powerful garden hose in your face at 2-4 second intervals and sometimes for 30 second bursts at a time, friend 3 who is hiding so you can’t see him, throws a full bucket of water in your face every minute or so, friend four burns a five dollar note every minute to simulate the fuel burn and friend 5 pops in a couple of times during the day pretending to be water police and asking to see your passport. (If you get a good sort of the opposite sex to dress up in a sexy Police outfit this will ease your boredom and may open up other possibilities but it will be totally unrealistic).

Did you enjoy that? Welcome back to the rest of you. You really missed something. Anyway, on with the story. So we started to head south west towards the Dardanelles. Here the Marmara Sea funnels into a very narrow gap and causes the seas and wind to rise. We were surfing 4 meter breaking swells in very windy conditions and I was starting to wonder how much worse it would get from the funnel effect when Ivan’s machine broke again. The connection between the drive shaft and the impellor was stuffed, a result of damage from debris on the rivers earlier in the ride and no reflection on the Seadoo brand.
We were close to the coast and could see a town so Travis set up to tow Ivan because my machine was taking on a lot of water for some reason(yet to be established). For the next 40 minutes, the boys towed while I kept an eye on them and went ahead to find a suitable spot to come in. This was great team work in awful conditions.
Finally we limped into the beautiful little fishing village of Kumbag. The locals were very friendly. They helped us pull the Seadoos out of the water and then invited us to tea.

We are now stuck here for at least the next two days waiting for parts.
Cheers
J

Today we spent the day repairing the damage to Ivan’s Seadoo and doing a routine service on all three.Thanks to Vidal Itkin and the boys from Aqua Motors for all their good work and assistance.

In the evening we had a wonderful Turkish dinner on the waterfront near our hotel.

I hate to take advantage of you, but while I have your attention, some of you, or someone close to you that you know, should be thinking about our early detection of cancer message and getting some tests. It’s better to find out early. Here it is again. If you qualify then just do it. It has saved my life twice.

SKIN CANCER: If you have sun-damaged skin, get regular skin checks done by a specialist. If you notice that a mole has changed shape or is bleeding, get it looked at.

CERVICAL CANCER: Pap smears are strongly recommended every three years starting at age 21, or within three years of sexual activity, until age 65.

BREAST CANCER: Mammograms are recommended every year or two starting at age 40.

COLON CANCER: Screening is strongly recommended for people aged 50 to 75.

TESTICULAR CANCER: Men should be familiar with themselves. Any change in size or feel of a testicle should be investigated.

OTHER CANCERS: Many kinds of cancer screening tests can benefit people who have symptoms or a family history of cancer. For more information consult your doctor.

Waking at 7.30 we ate breakfast and then decided to head down to customs via the Seadoos. When we got to the Seadoos, we were again thrown into shock. Some one had got on them to steal from the glove boxes and front compartments and had untied Ivan’s front rope. This meant that his machine had thrashed around in all the boat wash and the upper front end was completely destroyed with bits of Seadoo all either floating around or sitting on the bottom. To top this off his Seadoo had damaged the boat we had tied up to and the ACTUAL boat owner(not last night’s scammer) was there and yelling at us in Turkish.

While Ivan and Travis tried to retrieve pieces of skis and put the jigsaw back together again, I paid the owner off and apologized in sign language. We decided to skip customs, regroup to a friendly marina and do customs by taxi and were getting ready to leave when the water police turned up and demanded to see our passports. More time was wasted there before we were invited to follow them by water to customs.

This wasn’t as easy as it might sound because Ivan’s machines steering cable was broken and he was steering using cable ties(don’t ask).
When we got to customs there was a huge slop hitting the wharf and we asked if we could go to Kalamis Marina across the Bosphorus to clear customs in more peaceful conditions. After much ringing of hands and more phone calls, this was approved and we were escorted to and left at Kalamis. Contrary to all advice, including that of the water police, there is no customs at Kalamis. But all was not lost as the visit to Kalamis afforded me the opportunity to lose my Seadoo key.

Now we had to call Vidal Itkin from BRP Turkey who had been waiting for us for 4 days and for the whole of this day at Pendik Marina further down the coast. Vidal was organising our service for the machines. We had to tell him that while we appreciated that he had been waiting for hours at Pendik, that it would be more helpful if he could come to Kalamis and bring a laptop to program another key. To his credit he did and later we did make Pendik and Vidal and his men pulled us out and took us to the BRP HQ for a service. We are very grateful to BRP Turkey and Vidal for all their help. It was outstanding.

Later that afternoon George and the crew turned up and we sorted the gear out, shook hands and sent them on their way back to the UK. Thanks guys.

In other news, it was always only going to be three riders from Istanbul and the 4th would jump ahead and join us as necessary. Due to the ride being severely underfunded, we have had to can that idea and unfortunately Jed now goes home to go back to work and earn some money instead of spending it. We thank Jed for his contribution and enjoyed his time with us.

Now we are down to three. We are on our own.