JesseMartin.Net
Adventures
Dreaming is my drug. It’s what I use to get me through the hard times. For me, this started early when I went on the first adventure with my Dad and brother. It was on the Cape York trip after spending two months on the ocean that I had the very first idea to sail around the world. As soon as I got back from Cape York, I started writing proposals to sail single handed around the globe.
Throughout year 9 and 10 I needed another plan to aim for. This time I wanted to go with no parents. Beau was my only travelling partner. We used our money from a junk mail round we had as a job to buy a sea kayak each. We managed to get a few sponsors and then in year 10 (Beau was in yr 8) we took the last term off school and flew to New Guinea.
We kayaked for five weeks, camping in the local villages as we went. We came back with a whole heap of video footage. My plan was to make a short film to sell, then I could buy a yacht to sail around the world on. Once again it didn’t go exactly to plan and the tapes remained in a shoe box under my bed. VCE was approaching and I decided to knuckle down to get good grades.
A month in VCE I got a call from a skipper. He was in the Caribbean looking for crew. I had applied several month earlier but been rejected. Now it seemed one of his crew hadn’t turned up. I packed my bags, took the school books and went to meet Dave in Belize. Finally I was about to get some proper ocean experience. Three month later we arrived in Tahiti. It was June of ’98. I felt confident about sailing around the world. I called mum and flew home. For the rest of the year until December my family helped me organise the trip.I left with a total of three hours solo sailing experience, 10 months of food and begrugingly, some school books.
After the solo trip, I felt like I could do anything and the thing at the top of my list was to sail around the world again, but this time stop at all the places I’d passed by and do it with friends. For two years the Journey of Kijana was planned and in March 2003, we departed. What was meant to be a three year voyage lasted only 10 months. We are currently working to edit the 120 hours of footage into a television program.