Any jet skiers? Who wants to go to the Bahamas?

yup

 

Damn, I would have been all over this had I known about it earlier! I have ridden from Long Beach to Catalina several times, once on a standup 800 SXR (never again).
If everyone does not have GPS or navigation make sure the ones that do not dont wander off, we had a guy get lost in the fog on one of our Catalina trips, he was very lucky we found him or he could have died!

 

Still in.

What about the depression off of Africa. Any worries about that turning into a storm on our way back?

So if the sharks and the pirates don't get us, at least we have a hurricane we can count on.

 

That's the spirit!


The wave coming off Africa shouldn't be a concern. It's only showing a 10% chance of developing and hopefully will follow the same path as the last two.

 

Also, marine forecast for Friday is showing winds 5-7 and less than 2' seas :up:

Now if only the rain forecast would improve for Sunday

 

bring your riding glasses/goggles

otherwise you won't be going far if it is raining!

 

I just got this e-mail from the resort manager:

 

We made it back!

Not that any of you f@ckers care! lol

 

bad ass... post up some details

 

Well?!?!? How was it???

 

Damn, nobody got eaten by a shark? Not even a single one?

 

Damn sharks got a taste of Cuban meat. Nothing but the best now.

 

Good on you guys. Hope it was all and more.

 

I thought of you guys while skiing in the rough Gulf this weekend. :up::FL:

 

Yeah, we need a shark report.

Me and the kids went surfing on Sunday and the fuckers were thick.

 

can't wait to hear about this one, i take it Bangkok didn't get anyone?

 

cool! did you manage to ride that without crashing it at least cretu? ;-)

im jealous.

 

here is a full recap....


we left a bit later than expected on Friday morning from Boca Raton Inlet in FL, around 9:30AM or 10ish.

The dude from the jet ski rental was missing a leg, so he was pretty much a pirate, which made the beginning of the trip all that much better. These jet skis were pretty old and beat up, definitely should have had warning lights going off in our heads that they might not make it the whole trip. lol

The seas were pretty rough for the first 10 miles and I was sure that the trip over was going to suck. We also lost both of our coolers with almost all of our water and food in them within the first 10-15 miles as well, so things were going awesome.

After about 20-30 miles out the water turned to nearly flat and smooth as glass in some parts when we were in the gulf stream. we saw flying fish constantly and at one point were surrounded by a school of dolphins. we got some awesome video, if you're friends with me on facebook you can watch mine. I put my mask and fins on and got in the water with them but they wouldnt come much closer than about 10 feet.

we only had two 5gal cans of fuel as backup with us. this would prove to be the biggest oversight of the trip. we got about 15 miles from land and all of our fuel lights were on. we may have been 15 miles from land but we were still about 25 miles from our destination, the marina.

we actually made it to a deserted beach on Grand Bahama island where we were all able to put about 3 gallons of gas in our skis and hoped they would make it the rest of the way to the marina. well, they didnt. Tristan and Dale's skis ran out of gas about halfway to the marina and they were left drifting along the shore. Myself and Aaron decided to go try to make it to the marina or at least an inlet and find help. We managed to find an inlet and it was pretty deserted except for one guy who was about to take his daughters fishing in his boat. He was happy to give us a ride to the nearest gas station to fill up two new gas cans that he sold us as well (we figured we would need more gas for the return trip).

By the time we made it back to find Tristan and Dale, they had already drifted into the shore but Dale had already walked to the nearest road, flagged down a passerby and got them to help him go fill the 5gal can he had on his ski. So now we each had about 5 gal and we were able to make it the rest of the way to the inlet.

As soon as we got to the inlet we were greeted by our gracious Bahamian hosts as well as a news crew from the local paper who did a front page story on our adventure. They had been waiting all day to speak with us. We got checked in by customs, which was possibly the longest customs process I have EVER been through but they were very friendly.

The next day and half we hung out on in the Freeport area and visited a few good restaurants with friends we made. Friday night Dale and I even wound up going to the bars with the customs agents that checked us into the country!

The trip home was where the real fun started. As soon as I woke up on Sunday morning around 6:30AM I had a bad feeling when I went outside as there was already a good amount of wind. We got out of the marina by about 7:30AM and I knew we were in for a long ride home. The wind was already causing a good bit of chop and it would prove to only get worse....much worse. We did however plan ahead in terms of fuel, for the trip home we each had two 5gal cans on our skis so we knew we'd have plenty to make the 85 mile trip home.

Well, about 20-30 miles out the seas continued to get bigger. Luckily we were traveling with the wind so we were able to ride with the waves/chop rather than against it but at the height of the rough seas we were in about 6-8 foot waves in the middle of the Gulf Stream. I am not even exaggerating, it was definitely the wrong conditions to be making the attempt to cross back but we didnt have much choice at that point.

Even with the bad conditions things were going okay and we were making decent time. Up until about 20-25 miles from the FL coast. Go figure, MY jet ski is the one that breaks down. Literally just shuts off and nothing is even turning on. It was an electrical issue but we couldnt figure it out, I checked the battery connections but everything was fine there, except for the fact that it had about 5 years of rust and corrosion on it!

We had to hook up my ski to Tristans with our tow rope and tow my jet ski at 5-10 miles an hour the last 20 miles while I rode bitch on Dales ski in 6-8 foot seas. It sucked! We also used nearly all our gas to make it back since we were going at such a slow pace and Tristan's ski was sucking us gas towing my ski.

Nearly everything that couldve gone wrong on this trip went wrong BUT it was an awesome experience. I dont think I would ever do it again but even so, it was really cool to do it once.

 

Good report. :up:














(You guys are idiots.)

 

Wow. Great story. Hope you can post some pics / vids!!