Four men on three Sea Doos are taking the ultimate ride from London to Auckland. Jeremy Burfoot and his team will travel 20,000 miles in four months. Sue Baggaley met the team just days before they left. 

Jeremy Burfoot and his team will attempt to break the world personal watercraft record by riding from London to New Zealand, a journey of some 32,000 kilometres. They set off on August 1 from the Royal Docks in the heart of London to ride some of Europe’s most famous waterways, to cross the Indian Ocean and finish in Auckland sometime in November.

Jeremy Burfoot is a 51-year-old Qantas pilot who is married with three sons. I asked him why he would risk so much by undertaking this possibly life-threatening adventure. Jeremy told me that when he was affected by cancer he felt the need to raise public awareness about ways to prevent the disease and raise funds for global cancer research. Burfoot will lead the team of four: he is joined by Travis Donoghue and Jed Martin from New Zealand and Ivan Otulic from Croatia.

Otulic holds the Guinness Record for the greatest distance travelled on a jet ski in 24 hours with a ride of 1,641 kilometres along the Adriatic coast of Croatia. Burfoot is leading the team through the rivers of Europe, around the Arabian Peninsula, down the western coast of India, via Singapore to Sydney and finally on to Auckland.

I asked him what the team’s chances were of success: “Eighty percent I reckon. The logistics have taken us three years to sort out and our biggest hurdles have been permissions, visas, fuel, food and security.

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