Australia by WaveRunner

Less than six months remain till the Terra Australis-Girt by Sea crew, headed by an adventurous married couple aged in their 50s, attempt to round Australia by personal water craft (PWC).

Along with setting a record for the longest distance covered by PWC, the husband and wife team of Glenn and Lorraine Keating and their support crew will be filming a documentary about their travels, travails, wild scenery and coastal townships along the way.

Should they be successful, the Keatings will also be the only people to have completed a complete navigation of the the Australian mainland including Tasmania.

The travel schedule shows they will depart Sydney on April 1, 2016, and head to Brisbane, the Whitsundays, Cape York, Darwin, Broome, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Tasmania to complete the anti-clockwise circumnavigation.

While the ground breakers were the crew of four who circumnavigated the mainland in 2000, their journey didn't cover Tasmania.  

The team from Terra Australis will be using two lightly modified Yamaha FX Cruiser HOs for their Girt by Sea challenge.  The Yamaha range of WaveRunners are without the doubt the most respected PWC's in the market place, they say, and the naturally aspirated 1.8 litre marine engine has a reputation for outstanding performance and reliability.  

The naturally aspirated version was selected over the more popular and more powerful supercharged version due to its mechanical simplicity. With team more concerned with comfort and storage capacity, the increased fuel economy would also be a bonus.

The nature of our expedition meant that fuel range was the main priority in the planning phase of the project.  Whilst the FX Cruiser HO's standard 70 litre tank is good for around 250 kilometres with very judicial use of the throttle, the Keatings will be needing a range of around the 500km mark in some of the more remote areas of the country.  

After much research and head scratching the Keatings heard about an extremely simple and effective solution.  

"Whilst initially thinking that we would get a custom designed rack for the rear swim platform to hold four 20 litre jerry, we quickly came up with drawbacks, the biggest being the problem with refuelling at sea if needed," they explain.

"The idea that we ended up going with was the fitment of an auxiliary 75 litre tank strapped to the rear swim platform. The beauty of the low profile tank is that it still allowed access to rear grab handle when remounting the WaveRunner in the event of a spill."

Getting the fuel from the auxiliary tank to the WaveRunner's main tank is said to be a fairly simple affair that requires no pump system or major modifications.

The next thing they needed was increased storage capacity and, while the FX Cruiser HO has the largest storage capacity of any PWC on the market at 125.5 litres, they knew this wouldn't be enough.  

"We found that our camera gear alone would take care of most of the space leaving us with very little room for camping equipment and provisions.

"After much research we settled on using a series of dry bags simply strapped to the ample pillion seats of the FX Cruiser HO. The only addition to storage beside the dry bags is a 45 litre icebox for keeping perishables and emergency food stores.

"We will also be carrying a range of safety and navigational equipment on board each of the WaveRunners and made the decision early on to duplicate the equipment across both machines so in the unlikely event that we loose one of them we will still have everything that we need to get safely to shore. Probably the most important single piece of equipment will be the hand held GPS that each of us will carry," say husband and wife pairing, Glenn and Lorraine Keating.  

The idea for Terra Australis-Girt by Sea was conceptualised over a couple of cold beers at the local one Tuesday afternoon. The couple were sitting back and chatting about how much fun they had had riding Personal Water Craft whilst in Vietnam when the conversation quickly evolved. The Terra Australis Girt by Sea crew intend to create a travel documentary and real time travel adventure show. Follow them at www.terraaustralisgirtbysea.com.au/.