WORRIED Doncaster man Jonathan Oddie was today awaiting news of a close pal who has gone missing off the holiday island of Bali.
An air and sea search is underway for South Yorkshire jet ski ace Jeremy Hoyland, after he disappeared off the coast of the Indonesian resort on Friday afternoon and has not been seen since.
The 41 year old from Penistone is a leading light in the world of jet-ski sea scooter racing and had been invited to Bali for the Asian Beach Games as a guest of the organisers.
He had just finished an assignment as race director at the world finals of the sport in the USA.
On Friday Jeremy went out on a recreational trip on sea scooters with four friends to the nearby Nusa Lembongan islet.
He was supposed to return to Tanjung Benoa beach a few hours later to preside over a sea scooter race but did not turn up.
The rest of the party arrived back with two scooters during the afternoon but Jeremy was not with them. Close friend Jonathan Oddie, who has been monitoring the search operations from his home in the Doncaster area, said Jeremy had 10 years' experience in the sport.
He said: "Jeremy contacted base on his cellphone at around 2pm local time to report there was a problem with one of the ski scooters.
"He called later at 6pm to say that the ski had started to sink. Night was falling soon after that so there was little time to get a helicopter up there to search that day. Now after two days of searching Jeremy has still to be found. Resources are limited out there, they have one boat and two helicopters, but all the local fishermen have been helping in their boats as well."
Jonathan said Jeremy's wife Jacqui had flown out to Indonesia, leaving their two children behind.
He added: "There is still plenty of reason to be positive.
"Jeremy is an experienced jet-skier and if he has managed to get to land I think his chances are quite high. There are hundreds of small islands in that vicinity, but a lot are uninhabited and some only have small populations with poor communications with the outside world."
Jonathan said sea scooters were really Jeremy's hobby - his day job was in the family engineering business.
He added: "The next stage will be to extend the search area so it covers hundreds of square miles."
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