London to Auckland

Welcome to the latest update of the London-Sydney blog.

We are getting busier and busier organizing the event. It’s just as well we put it off for a year because we seem to have enough work ahead of us to easily last until August 2010. Fortunately our General Manager Mark Cole has been wandering around thumping people until they promise to help in return for him stopping the thumping.

The astounding thing is that Mark has managed to pressgang some impressive people to join the team. There must be something interesting about a PWC ride half way around the World that passes through pirate and shark infested waters, 22 countries and involves rivers, canals and ocean crossings.

We would like to welcome John Letham from Westfield’s who has taken on the logistics portfolio. He will be ably assisted by Chris Jarvis, Chris Cole, and Sam Linder. Air New Zealand’s Vernon Clark joins us as head of communications and James Parkinson will look after IT. Chris Weston has joined as honorary solicitor and Simpson Weston Solicitors will be looking after all our legal requirements.   

We have also formed a Trust Board and hope to announce a couple of high profile additions to this Board shortly.

Meanwhile on the other side of the World in Paraguay, the completion of our support boat ‘Domino’ is proceeding at high speed. This includes the addition of the platform for the Seadoos and the crane. Catch the latest at www.dominocatamaran.blogspot.com

The website has been updated in a number of areas to reflect all the changes. Thanks to Ian HallKenney for all his help there. The team page has been updated but is already out of date with all our latest staff additions. The Support boat details are on there too. And some of you will be interested to see this page…                             

http://www.marinelightning.com/newsite/systems_gallery_files/seadoo.html  Ewen Thompson at Marine Lightning Protection will be working with us to provide lightning protection for us in tropical areas. Having lightning protection on a PWC will, I believe, be a World first but given that we will be screaming though the tropics at warp speed we will not want to run and hide every time we see a dark cloud looming and neither do I fancy ending up with frizzy hair and an extra hole in my backside from a lightning exit point so this will be a most welcome addition to the skis. Have a read at the URL above. It’s quite interesting.

In other news my Boss, Peter Wilson at Qantas has said he will give me the time off for the event. This is a great relief and very appreciated. Up until now I wasn’t assured of the time off and was worried that if I had just disappeared for 120 days they might have invited me to find alternative employment. Thanks Pete.

That’s about it for now. Cheers for now. Jeremy