All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission. Dodging pirates and oil rigs, Justin Packshaw of fashion label De Roemer jet-skis the Nigerian coastline. I'm on a sandbank half a mile off the coast of Nigeria.
My jet ski has broken down and the Nigerian navy gunboat that's escorting us has run aground on this uncharted strip of sand. It's the end of a very long couple of days and there's a big storm rapidly heading towards us. Oh, and we're surrounded by pirates. I'm starting to wonder if this latest adventure of mine really was such a good idea. I got into this predicament because my good friend Sir Og Amazu, a successful Nigerian businessman and philanthropist, told me he wanted to come up with a suitable way to launch Challenge , a charitable organisation he had set up with his wife, Lady Joy, to fund philanthropic projects around the world.
Knowing that Og couldn't swim, I had suggested we jet-ski from Cameroon to Benin via the length of the Nigerian coastline. Madly or bravely, he thought it was a terrific idea. And so now we're here on this sandbank in the dark, being lashed by the worst storm to hit Nigeria for years. Having been a soldier and gone to war, my first instinct is to jump on our one working jet ski - mine having started to sink earlier in slapstick fashion - and head for land.
But our Navy escort tells me, in no uncertain terms, that we would have a dust-up with pirates before we got to the coast, so we decide to tough it out. Mercifully, Og has learned to swim by this point, and we have both become pretty handy on our steeds after practice sessions around the Isle of Wight in mid-December - a somewhat different prospect to the Gulf of Guinea.
The Nigerian coastline is very beautiful, with tropical fauna tumbling down to miles of empty white beaches, but look the other way, out to sea, and it's like a scene from Mad Max , with thousands of tankers at anchor and hundreds of oil rigs with gas flames spouting from high cranes. Jet-skiing through this is surreal and feels totally unpredictable - and downright dangerous. Our powerful machines are capable of reaching 50mph. In open water, with tricky currents, steering one is not dissimilar to riding a mechanical bucking bronco.
