effect that had scuppered the run. I needed

to try sitting a little further forward and to hit

a higher speed. The ramp was also perhaps

a little too steep, so David Barratt, whose

carpenters had built the ramp, lifted the end

with help from a crowd of volunteers and

shored it up to give me a shallower angle

of entry.

When the Suzuki finally came ashore, we

knew we might have a problem. At that depth

the pressure would have forced water into

places that it would not have gone in the

shallows the day before. All we could do was

strip it down and dry it out. Just half an hour

later, incredibly, the Suzuki started on the first

kick. We were back in business.

198  hydroplaning motorbike

On the second run, as I waited at the start

point, my head was buzzing with all the

things that we had discussed – then, as the

sand tyre’s paddles gripped the earth and sent

me rocketing forward, everything suddenly

seemed to be perfectly clear. I hit the ramp

at a good speed and the water at a good angle

and sailed across the lake. For a few seconds

I definitely had that 100-metre marker in my

sights, but then the front wheel dropped and

I was off over the handlebars again.

I knew that I had done better, and the verdict

from Mike was … 64 metres. At that sort of

depth, and with such poor visibility, I could

pretty much have parked my house on the

bottom of the lake and we wouldn’t have been

able to find it. The bike’s buoy had deployed,

in fact it had popped out while I was coming

down the ramp, but it was difficult to tell from

Above: By the time I was this low in the water . . .