Frozen Smiles

It was five years ago when I last suggested to Amber we go on a jet boat. To her defense, she was only six and we were in New Zealand, staring at windblown jet boaters as they got off with startled looks on their faces.  She said NO.

Obviously, after that rejection, it took quite some time to get up the courage to book a jet boat tour. This time I didn’t ask her...  With reservations, she agreed to go and we joined Ozjet for a high-speed adventure tour of Sydney Harbour.

The experience started poorly (our fault entirely) when we were late for the safety briefing. We don’t remember being told to arrive 15 minutes ahead, but that’s neither here nor there… The good news was, Amber didn’t have time to back down.

There were only two seats left onboard: right at the front. “Beauty!” I thought! 

The captain thought differently. 

He envisaged Amber’s slight body bouncing overboard, and tried to get other passengers to swap. They wouldn’t, so we climbed on in with a warning from the captain to his less-than-generous-crew.

“I’ll have to go slower since we have a small person in front”, he said. That made us feel great (sarcasm intended).

What resulted was half an hour of fast-paced excitement from Circular Quay all the way out to the Heads. I don’t think the captain let-up and it wasn’t long before the cold Sydney spray had completely frozen our giggles to our faces. (It was VERY cold and I got an ‘ice-cream headache’).  

It turns out, the front seat was a fantastic place to be and we think our experience was enhanced by it! In the middle of the excitement Amber turned to me and said “Don’t let me say no to this again!”

So, after finally doing it, my tips are:

·         Take a change of clothes because the spray WILL go down your neck
·         Arrive in good time!
·         Think of it as a fairground ride: if they like THAT, they’ll love this!
·         Get it the front seat!