Jetski Racing - Sandles Racing - Richard and Rowland Plyer

Jetskiing, waterskiing, donuts and motorbikes - Richard and Rowland Plyer

Sandlesracing.co.uk is the home of Richard and Rowland Plyer´s jetski racing (and wakeboarding, waterskiing, motorcycling, anything with an engine) website. We try and keep it up to date with the things we get up to relating to jetskiing, but sometimes we´ll just add videos and pics of our latest stupid ideas or adventures.

December 2007

December has been a month of fancy dress for us. I think i´ve done fancy dress once or twice before in my 29 years, and I really should have done it more. Me and Row went to the gym dressed as the guys out of the 118 218 adverts (a cheap copy actually of 118 118 in England). I have to say though I was horrified to see that I actually looked normal in this outfit until I put the moustache on! Row on the other hand looked like Hulk Hogan, only not as hulky and bit whiter! Check back in the video and pictures sections soon, i´m busy putting the photos and video together at the moment.

We had a party just after Christmas with all our french friends, fancy dress again, where Row dressed up as a snow man (a pretty scary one it turned out to be), and I came as one of Santa´s elves. So that was the second time in 3 weeks I´d put womens tights on! Check out the photos.

November 2007

I´ve been a bit lax updating the site recently, just because I´ve been too busy doing things outside. Who wants to sit indoors coding when the sun´s shining? Most of October and November has been taken up by our trip to Japan and New Zealand. We went with a french friend to Japan for 2 weeks, taking in Tokyo, Nagano, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Izu Hanto and Mount Fuji (although it was foggy and rainy so we didn´t actually see much of it). We did all the touristy things like karaoke and capsule hotels, Disneyland Tokyo and getting chased by local deer, and we went to a nightclub that was so busy there wasn´t actually room to dance!

From Japan we moved on to New Zealand, and our friend Romain returned to France. We spent a hectic 2 weeks doing all the usual crazy stuff, including the Sky Jump in Auckland, skydiving in Taupo, dirt biking and mud baths in Rotorua, caving at Waitomo, 2 bungys, river surfing, jet boat and more dirt biking in Queenstown, the world´s largest commercially rafted waterfall in Rotorua again, and loads of other bits and pieces along the way.

We left Auckland at the beginning of November and had a one night stop in Hong Kong. One night was enough for us, we didn´t like HK that much, it´s a dirty, smelly place and the locals aren´t friendly like the Japanese. Row managed to buy a fake Rolex without too much persuasion, we did some electrical shopping, saw the Symphony of lights, the world´s largest permanent light show (a bit cheesy though), and we went up Victoria Peak.

After all that we were glad to get back home, but at the same time didn´t want the adventure to end. There´s always next time though. Roll on winter and the ski season now, just 6 weeks till we go now!

July 2007

This months highlight consisted of a jetski time trial at the local lake (Aquadjetland). We started at around 11am with our practice laps. It turns out that me and Row have been doing the course wrong (we were never actually shown the way round), and we´d actually been putting in an extra turn! Still, it didn´t matter, it just made our laps even quicker, so the lap record (still held by me, Richard) is now a bit quicker than last year.

There weren´t too many entrants, none of them had raced, so me and Row picked up the trophies for ski, and the local lads picked up the runabout trophies.

After all that I went and had a go at jumping a bmx into the lake off a makeshift ramp. On my second attempt (increasing the speed a little), the ramp broke and the front wheel jammed in it, sending me over the bars with the bike and the saddle tried to stick itself somewhere it´s not supposed to be. After having got my breath back, I decided my luck was up for the day and went home!

June 2007

Well this summer has been pretty poor so far. We´ve had nothing but rain rain rain, so the skis haven´t even been out yet, although now that Row has put his new sticker set on his kwacker, it´s given us some motivation to go out and ride.

The only other news really is that Row is doing some kind of dance/gym show in town at the end of the month. It should be really funny, he´s doing a remixed Body Attack with 7 others, infront of lots of paying people, so watch this space for an amusing video!

Update - Row´s show was a success, you can see the video in the videos section.

March 2007

My first photo exhibition was displayed in the local theatre when my friend´s dance production was on. The photos I took were of his crew rehearsing for one of the two shows he put on. His girlfriend also took pictures and between us we made a small exhibition of 40 photos, in a hall next to the dance show. We had special lighting and made an abstract thing (that´s all I can think of to call it) which look really good with our blue and red lighting. You can see the photos in the photo gallery.

January 2007

Well it didn´t get as cold this year as last, the lake didn´t freeze thick enough to ride the quad on, but it did get cold when we went skiing. Me, Row and 19 others went to Val Thorens for a weeks skiing, and although the snow wasn´t great when we got there, it snowed for 2 or 3 days mid-week. We had 2 great powder days, but it was sooooo cold, -15 in the resort, and much colder at the top of the mountain. In fact it was so cold my nose actually froze in about 2 minutes after getting out of the cable car! Luckily Martin (or Marvin as we renamed him) had a spare scarf so there was no damage luckily.

When we came home there was a little snow, but it soon went, and last week I was sat outside a café in a t-shirt. Nice. Spring is almost here, the wetsuits will be coming out soon!

December 2006

Not much jetski riding has gone on this month, as the lake has been frozen. I prefer the warmer weather for riding, but if it gets as cold as last year, we´ll be able to ride the quad on the lake again! The ice was that thick we spent hours sliding, spinning and towing each other on the ice. Roll on summer!

November 2006

Winter is definitely here (well almost, we´re on the 6th November) as we took the ski boat out of the water today, putting it to bed until next spring. The old boat´s staying in, so we´ll still be able to do some donutting or jumping the wake on the skis (jetskis that is).

October 2006

We had a look at getting a jetski licence so we could ride on the sea over here in France. It costs about € 300 each, and takes 3 days! That includes an afternoon showing our skills on the river, then some written exams. I think we´ll leave that till next year, these frenchies don´t seem to do winter riding anyway. Oh well, have to get the trials bike out again.

We´ve just added our very own blog, which you can keep up to date on if you really want with an RSS feed. That means every time there´s a new post, you´ll be up to date as soon as you open your RSS reader. If you´ve got no idea what I´m talking about, just visit the blog.

September 2006

So how much jetski riding have we done this year? Err....... not a lot, but we did got to a jetski lake near us, just to go and meet some people and ride together. The lake is an old quarry, with the bluest water I have ever seen. They´ve got a course set out and occassionally people do timed laps. The first time we were there I timed Row myself just to see what time he could do (1m 05s roughly). The owner asked me to do a timed lap, and only having Row´s stock Superjet, I wasn´t sure if i´d beat their times.

No problem! I took 2 and a bit seconds off the lap record, so the record now stands at 1m 05.48 secs for a standup jetski. Next time we´ll take the Kawasaki and break it again. Maybe we can beat Ludo Caumont´s record of 1m 02s which he did with a Hydrospace. Let you know soon. Have a look at this short video, mostly of Row coz i´m always the one behind the camera!

May 2006

If you were wondering where we were at the first European Jetski round this year, well, what i wrote below actually happened, i.e. most people seem to have bought a Hydrospace. We weren´t fully prepared either, as the move to France last year has kept us very busy, so unfortunately we´ll have to wait until next year, when there are some second hand Hydrospace skis for sale! If you know anyone who´s got one give us a bell!
In the meantime, please keep coming back, i´ll be adding more pics of other stuff we get up to soon!

December 2005

Rowland is taking part in this year´s (2006) European Jetski Championship in the stock ski class, now renamed Ski F3. He´s bought a Kawasaki SXR800 to do battle with, and we´re just hoping the rest of the field haven´t all bought the new Hydrospace stand up ski. This is the new four stroke Austrian built jetski that has quite a speed advantage over the standard SXR800. But he´ll still kick butt all the same!

Richard retired from racing in 2002, but still rides for fun on the sea and on the lake at home. He´ll be accompanying Rowland to all the races though, unless Rowland finds a girlfriend who takes up that seat in the van!

We´ve both raced in Expert Ski Superstock in the past, and done quite well, and Rowland raced in the World Finals at Lake Havasu in 2002 in Expert Ski Limited picking up 9th place!