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Adventurers plan to jetski from London to Auckland
A group of adventurers planning a world record jetski ride from England to New Zealand to raise money for cancer research have hit a stumbling block with the Port of London Authority.
Organisers of the 20,000-mile (32,000km) world record attempt, dubbed The Ultimate Ride, plan to set off from London on the Thames River in August before heading across the North Sea to Holland. They will then ride their personal watercraft through 15 cities before reaching Auckland on New Zealand’s North Island an estimated 120 days later.
The team will be led by Jeremy Burfoot, a Qantas pilot from Auckland who was the first to circumnavigate New Zealand on a jet-ski in 2006.
Mr Burfoot, 50, said the team of six had planned to start their 18,000 nautical mile journey on the Thames alongside Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster to gain maximum exposure for their cause, but they have not been given permission.
“The London Port Authority have said that jetskis are not allowed on the Thames,” Mr Burfoot told The Times. “So we’ve got someone in London looking into it, but if they say no we’ll just have to start further down the river.”
Mr Burfoot, who was diagnosed with a melanoma in 2005, said he wants to complete The Ultimate Ride to promote cancer awareness. He came up with the idea while he was piloting a jet and decided the course should follow the London-Sydney airline route, but on water and with an extra leg to Auckland thrown in.
Three jetskis will follow the route, with a catamaran riding behind as a support boat. The team will stick mainly to the coastlines as they travel more than halfway around the globe on jetskis, for up to eight hours a day.
"We're tackling one of the world's most iconic routes; the London-to-Sydney journey has been made famous by all kinds of intrepid travellers, though none have tried it on a personal watercraft," Mr Burfoot said.
Mr Burfoot, who has been riding jetskis for ten years, said that the team had begun training.
The team will pass through 15 cities on their way to Auckland, including Frankfurt, Belgrade, Istanbul, Cairo and Mumbai. They will also travel along 12 waterways, including the Rhine River, the Black Sea, the Suez Canal and the Great Barrier Reef.
Their route takes them through Europe to Turkey, past Greece, along the west coast of the Red Sea and into the Gulf of Aden at Yemen. The team will then be given a naval escort as they travel through pirate hotspots off Somalia.
