Sailing Saoirse - WE WERE HIT HEAD ON BY A JETSKI ‼️

We got hit head on by a jetski!!! Emergency repairs and the full story on what happened. We left the Salvation Islands feeling rejuvenated after our Long Sail along the north coast of Brazil and it took us less than 24 hours to get to the Du Maroni River. The current was strong along the coast of French Guiana pushing us along faster than we anticipated. We got to the mouth of the du Maroni River at day break after trying to slow down as much as we could. We wanted to enter the mouth of the river in daylight because we had noticed there were A LOT of fishing boats along the coast. Luckily we got there in daylight because the fishing nets in the mouth of the river were crazy, nets were strung between the red and green channel markers from far out at sea all the way into the river mouth. There were times where we had to go around channel markers to try and avoid the nets as well as stop in our tracks, pivot go back on our track and turn around while waiting for fishermen to lift their nets out of the water. It was nerve wrecking and we were all out on deck with binoculars trying to spot the next obstacle. We knew that we were entering the river just after low tide but we wanted to be able to get up the river in daylight so we pushed through. The current was incredibly strong while we put our engines at 2000rpm and above we were lucky to move at 1.5 to 3 knots. It took us 11 hours from getting to the channel markers outside of the river to us being safely on a mooring ball. After about 10 and a half hours of pushing up the river we could just see the masts of yachts in our binoculars, we all started to get excited after a very long day! The excitement turned to pure panic which turned to pure anger in a matter of minutes. Two jetskis started approaching us at top speed coming straight for the nose of the yacht, they were coming at such a speed we thought maybe they were coming to tell us something urgently or were part of the Saint Laurent Du Maroni marina coming to talk to us. The jetskis were coming at us with such intent, at such a crazy speed, and straight for the front of the yacht before cutting it very fine and shooting around the side of the yacht and we realized they were just playing chicken! Teagan, in the saloon, called to wake Colben to have more hands on deck as we were approaching SLM. As she got to the staircase there was an ALMIGHTY crunch and crash. As she stood at the top of the stairs she felt the entire port side hill lift and twist out of the water and smash back down. The crash sound will always live in our memory banks with the feelings of pure panic. Everyone ran up front on deck and we saw the one jetski next to the yacht, we assumed he was the one that hit us and was okay. We started screaming at him and proceeded to run towards the front of the yacht to asses the damage. We were sure that we would be taking on water as the jetskis sit low in the water and immediately thought the damage was below waterline. After getting to the front of the yacht we saw the second jetski, there were two guys on it and the passenger had fallen off and was swimming back to the jetski. After making sure they were alright we started assessing the damage. The damage was luckily above water level but we were still unsure if there was any damage below the water line because we couldn’t get down to see the damage. The jetski that hit us sped off and disappeared. The second jetski stayed behind because Teagan and Karen were trying to get as much details from him as possible while we were trying to do this he kept coming towards the yacht and hitting it, shooting back out turn around while spraying us with his wake and coming back and hitting the yacht again, we assumed this was because he wasn’t familiar with how to actually use a jetski. After a lot of screaming he assured us they were insured and he gave us his number. With very little facilities in the area we were so worried about if we were taking on water we wouldn’t be able to haul out to do repairs. We made it to SLM after that in 15 minutes. Luckily we had Alex (a fellow yacht owner at the anchorage) who helped us onto a mooring which was incredibly helpful because we were all very shaken. After speaking to the police and trying to get ahold of the phone number that the jetski had given us we came to a dead end with the police telling us that we would never find the jetski owner and the number we were given didn’t work. After a 5 days of back and forth with the authorities and our insurance company we gave up, did our emergency repairs and got out of SLM before the next weekends manic jetski activities started up again. Watch our video to get more detail on all of this and to see the damage to Saoirse. We are incredibly thankful that no one was hurt and that the damage was above waterline. This scenario could have gone so differently and been so much more detrimental both to Saoirse and the jetski owner.