London to Auckland

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