London to Auckland

We finally got out of Belgrade at 5pm last night and were pleased to be going again.

Clearing customs into Romania at Moldova Deche was interesting. It was like going back 50 years in time with the paperwork destroying another tree.

After that we zoomed down river for a bit more before finding a small hotel on the side of the river just as it got dark.

Friday the 13th started like any normal day with a 5.50am wakeup and then a dive into the Danube to pluck some weed from the intakes of the jets from the late arrival the night before. Then we set off down the river in good weather towards the Iron Gate Dam complex at 943km from the Black Sea.

The Iron Gate Dam is a massive structure holding back the Danube between Serbia and Romania with a double lock on both sides. We were informed that we would have to wait 2 hours for some bigger boats to join us and that we would have to wait with the skis in the 35 degree heat. In the end it took 3.5 hours to get through there and we were totally pissed off.

Then we spent another hour at a tavern a few kms down stream while the ground crew refueled us in the oppressive temperatures. The owner of the taverna got the shits because we were using his dock so I told our cameraman Stuart to film him which he did (with the camera turned off) and everything calmed down.

After the refuel we set off down stream again well behind our targeted kms for the day. About half an hour before dark we encountered a huge thunderstorm which whipped up a strong headwind and large waves. We obviously weren’t going to make our target for the day so we started to look for a suitable place to camp at KM 700.

We had just settled on a small island with a sheltered inlet on the Romanian side and had sent Ivan off to the nearest town for food when we heard him returning with another PWC. The new guest turned out to be George from Bulgaria who said that he knew of a safe place on the Bulgarian side with a hotel right next door. It would be illegal to do this but it was a small town and we thought under the circumstances that it was a pretty good proposition. We followed George to the harbor and tied the Seadoos up to a large ship parked in the harbor owned by two old Romanians who promised to look after the skis. Then George led us 80m to a cheap hotel. We had a good feed and a beer and went to bed content and happy that the Seadoos were safe.