London to Auckland

More locks, more rain and really cold. Playing a game of cat and mouse with the German water police. They are nice guys and I think we are winning but they are close behind. Today they sent in one of their helicopters to beat us up at 50ft and we got sprung speeding again.
Reached the top of the European waterways at over 1300ft above sea level.Some of the locks here are 30m or 100ft high. Very impressive. Started down the other side towards the Danube river and stopped 3 locks and a couple of hours short of it.Today was bloody freezing.Had to get the guys off the machines at one point and find shelter and warm up with exercise.A couple of new records today.Fastest speed on Main-Danube Canal 85kph(13 is the limit). First PWCs to transit the area. Most warnings by German water police.
Cheers
Jeremy

We’ve washed up Erlangen on the Regnitz River and, happily, we’re still on schedule. The weather’s been a bit cold and miserable and we’re a little tired of the terrain, being rivers and locks, but all good as far as progress goes. We’re going hell for leather to make a 4 pm meeting on Friday with the Kinder Krebs Hilfe children’s cancer organisation in Vienna, Austria. I think they’re planning a little party!

The German police have been absolutely fantastic after an initial briefing to discuss our ‘style’. They’ve been letting other craft on the waterways know to keep out the way of the jet-skiing lunatics and have offered to help us on our way. That’s even though we broke the 13km an hour speed restriction on the 170km long Main Donau Canal, which links the Rhine with the Danube in Austria (the cops did express their disappointment in that).

We were waiting to enter yet another lock and dispatched the mad Croatian to a nearby village for coffee. Not only did he get coffee, he managed to score a monstrous pizza. So we’re riding along eating pieces of pizza as large as dinner plates. He’s a team player that guy.

Great marina for the night. Docks for our three jet-skis (one euro each), a room to sleep in and beer in the fridge (payment by way of honesty box).

Donate Ultimate Ride photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/projectphotos

We don’t speak German. We don’t read German. So imagine our surprise when we plowed into a nature reserve, populated by rather cross greenies. Apparently there was a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign. In German. Who knew? We did not make ourselves popular.

The night spent in a campsite. It rained.

In memory of Agnes Robertson

The team hasn’t really seen each other since leaving London; predictably the riders are way faster than the support crew! Still, we managed a little catch-up in the pub, had a bit of a yell at each other and ended up happily talking through various issues. As a result, team morale is high.

It’s also high because we’re on schedule. That’s unusual and we’re enjoying it now, because who knows when we’ll be on time again.

We’ve had a good ride on the Rhine; conditions are pretty good, though the river is flooded in parts.

We had a great welcome from the Dutch city of Nijmegen which will be remembered for a long time.They had a fire boat spraying water high above the river and put on a great morning tea. Thanks to Bill Holdsworth and Steve Sobot for organising this.

After that we stopped in Cologne and Frankfurt and were greeted by a tonne of media, including five camera crews. It took us an hour to get through all the interviews in each place. The coverage has been brilliant and people are starting to recognise us en route, which is very cool.

The German Childhood Cancer Foundation has also been very supportive and Travis and I made a visit to a local children’s cancer hospital – the good, if serious, reminder of what the Ultimate Ride is all about.

It’s prime camping season now, being the German summer, so we’re having to slow down to avoid pissing people off. We’ve been through about 10 locks and we’re keen to get through as many as we can tomorrow (Tuesday) with a target of around 24. They’ll be 60 locks in total. Later….

Leg two: In memory of Johannes Elberse

Two days out from departure and the team are all pretty wired. We’ve slept a bit, but mostly moved, moved and moved some more. That and talk to media. Launch day from London was magic, camera crews from home, the BBC and Al Jazeera in attendance, as well as a crowd of around 100 other PWC’s from UK clubs, which escorted us away from the River Thames towards Rotterdam.

Predictably the Channel bashed us around a bit; the water was choppy and messy and going was hard. Getting to Rotterdam took around nine hours, a lot more than we’d expected. As well as that, the ferry carrying our ground crew was delayed, so they were late getting in and woke me up! I need my beauty sleep.

This week we’re navigating the Rhine and the Danube Rivers and the Danube Canal, with visits to Cologne and Frankfurt, and stop offs in Rudesheim, Wurzburg, Erlangen and Regensburg in Germany, ending the first week in Vienna, Austria on Saturday. We’ll then head to Hungary and Croatia and out into the Black Sea.

We departed Rotterdam at 7 am on Monday for Nijmegen in the Netherlands, where we pigged out on coffee and cake and entertained lots of Dutch media with our exploits. A blocked fuel filter meant we were delayed getting as far south as Cologne. This little sucker is destined to slow us down as we’ll have to flush it out every 60 kms or so. Filter maintenance so far has left us three hours shorter than we should be getting to this well-appointed camp site in Koblenz, Germany.

After tomorrow’s media call in Frankfurt, we’ll be able to slow down a little and smell the flowers! Later, Jeremy

With the last day of preparation before the ride upon us the team is hard at work doing last minute alterations to the skis and it is looking at this stage that we will just ‘fall over the start line.’ With the team vehicle now covered in The Ultimate Ride stickers we really look the part.

Team riders Jeremy, Ivan (the crazy Croatian) and Travis will depart the Royal Wharfs at 8am sharp tomorrow morning alongside what is looking to be a large flotilla of PWC riders from around the area.

Last night served as a final meet and greet / piss up where many of the locals came to have a few beers and to give the team their final words of encouragement before we set out. It appears we have become somewhat local celebrities around The Cherry Tree Pub with many of us signing our first autographs last night.
Will keep updated as the ride goes on but for now its time to get back to work in order to have everything ‘ship shape’ for tomorrow.

Over and out.
Jed

Flat out today so this will be short and sweet. We spent the day getting jobs done and doing interviews. Travis and I trained into London for the live TVNZ Breakfast Show interview. Interesting but disconcerting as we couldn’t see Paul Henry. We were sitting in a darkened room facing a camera with two big spot lights on us and an ear piece in our ear. Two days to go. Tomorrow will be busy too.
Regards
Jeremy

If you happened to be following us yesterday on the tracker you will have noticed that the tracker was playing up. It showed us launching at South End at 5.30am and then riding out a few km and then stopping for some 5-6 hours.

If you were astute and knew about the massive sand banks and mud flats off South end you would have said “aaaahh ha haaaa those silly buggers have run aground and are currently struggling, unsuccessfully to get their heavy machines into deeper water, and having tried everything they have given up and have walked into the local Coastguard center and drank coffee for 3 hours”.

And it is with a tinge of embarrassment that I have to inform you that you are right. When the tide goes out in South end, it is like someone pulling a plug. You can see it moving across the mud flats at about 2-3km per hour. In the words of Maxwell Smart, “We missed it by that much” 5 minutes made all the difference.

There were, however many positives about this. It was a good team building exercise and we got to meet some really nice people at the Coastguard. I have a souvenir Coastguard coffee mug to show for it too.

But once off the mud, we ended up having a great ride around to Ramsgate in the English Channel. With France just a short hop away we were sorely tempted but now, very wary of the tides at South end we headed back up the Firth of Thames.

We ended up having a great 5 hour ride and everything worked well.
Once we had pulled the Seadoos out of the water we headed down to the local Seadoo dealer, Thorpe Bay Marine for a photo shoot and interview with local press. Then it was back to our base at The Cherry Tree-Rochford pub for a debrief.

The Cherry Tree-Rochford pub. What can I say? Great pub, great food, lovely setting but most importantly, magnificent people. Our hosts, Colin and Tina, and their staff have been so patient, supportive and helpful. It has been a great experience.
Until tomorrow then.
P.S Look for us on TVNZs breakfast show at 8.15 Friday morning.

Today The Ultimate Ride team has proven that should they go bust as ‘cross the world adventurers, they would have a promising future in the trailer modification business.
As Jeremy mentioned in his last blog, our friends from Becton’s Trailers refused to travel a short distance to come and fix our un-roadworthy trailer. In New Zealand and with the right amount of time we would be crying foul using words like Consumer Guarantees Act and threatening commercial ruin for the company in question. Red flags were raised when 5 minutes down the road from the trailer purchase all of the lights fell off the back of the thing. BUT…. we are here in the UK with bigger fish to fry and a countdown of just 4 days to departure.

Within 60 seconds of seeing the long and woeful trailer, Ivan had a blueprint in his mind of how he could change it so Jed and I (which makes us Jedi) were retained as his labourers and away we went unbolting this and that while our project manager attacked things with a grinder.

The remodel took us just 5 or 6 hours and was achieved using only the materials on the existing trailer. The long and short of it is that our long trailer ended up being a much shorter one and it wouldn’t have been too tricky or too unreasonable to expect the manufacturer to be responsible for this. We were sure to remove the Bectons Trailers stickers from our handiwork so that they couldn’t steal any credit that this improvement will surely generate.

Amongst friends Ivan is usually known as Oto , and will probably be referred to as such from this blog on but things might get confusing for you because he has also already collected himself two extra nicknames, “The Transformer” (see trailer pictures) and “That Crazy Croatian” (more evidence later)
With all the excitement of day one at our new trailer building careers, we missed the opportune tide to get the machines in the water for a bit of a play, but we will be setting out tomorrow bound for France on a bit of a test and shakedown (you can watch our progress with the tracker on our site).
We will let you know how it goes!

You might think its easy eating an English breakfast but I can tell you from experience that it’s not. It’s a complex task.
“Please explain” I hear you asking in a well meaning but slightly sarcastic tone.
Well it’s because of all the emotions that are involved and I tend to get emotional about food. When I like it I really like it and when I don’t like it I really don’t. I’ll ride through crocodile infested waters while giving the one fingered salute to pirates but don’t ever put me on Fear Factor because I’m going home in part 2.

But when I fly to Germany do you think I’m thinking about the steins of beer in the outdoor bars or the frauleins riding their bikes beside the river in the summer time? Oh no. I go to Germany on a culinary expedition. Chicken pepper schnitzel with fried potatoes, pig’s knuckles and sauerkraut, apple strudel. ….It’s great.

So getting back to the English breakfast, it starts with anticipation, them moves on to longing, followed by sheer delight when it is served. This is shortly followed by confusion as to where to start(The Japanese who are famous for procrastination at buffets would stare at it for at least an hour trying to figure out what to do). Then there’s concern that the man next to you got a bigger helping and greed as you wish you had more. Finally you move onto worrying that you might not be able to finish it and then when you do finish it (you would be a complete failure if you didn’t), uneasiness that you are going to be sick and severe guilt for what you have done to your body. Then you experience anxiety all day as you don’t want be caught in the wrong place when the baked beans kick in.
And on that note it is time for breakfast here at The Cherry Tree-Rochford. Talk amongst yourselves for a while and I’ll be back later…………….

Much much later……Your culinary correspondent is back and traumatized as expected, not to mention about 30,000 calories richer. But I’ll soldier on and tell you what else is happening.

Last night Ivan Otulic arrived from Croatia. Ivan is a man on a mission and even before we had managed to get a beer into him he had sussed out the operation, decided that the trailer in it’s current form is completely useless and come up with a plan.

This morning I phoned the trailer company and asked for help in fixing up the trailer, explaining that we couldn’t come to them because their 4,600 UK pound trailer was so stuffed that it wasn’t road worthy. The people at Becton’s Trailers (a free plug for them) refused to come to us even though we were stranded with their stuff up so now Ivan and the boys have ripped the trailer apart and are rebuilding it how it should have been built in the first place. (photos on face book when the job is complete).

Meanwhile out in the car park, Mark Robinson and his mates are installing AIS units in the machines. Yes it’s all happening here in Rochford and I better go and help.

Until tomorrow then. Jeremy