Starting up a new business and ensuring its success takes a strong backbone, Dart River Jet founder Neil Ross can tell you.
He recalled a time ''on one of the early trips in the winter of '89'' when the water was very low and he accidentally got the jet-boat he was driving stuck on a sandbank and had to carry three American customers from the boat to the shore.
He said he was a ''complete nervous wreck'' and after he managed to get the boat stuck on the same bank on the way back, he took the group of Americans to the hotel ''and I shouted them, and I shouted them and I shouted them''.
''And by the time they left it was the best time they'd ever had.''
He also remembered three Japanese tourists who had tried to warn him, albeit in Japanese, his van was floating across the marina and slowly sinking.
''That van was back in operation two days later.''
Mr Ross started the company, which operates from Glenorchy at the top of Lake Wakatipu, in 1988 and sold it in 1996.
''Perhaps I should have, perhaps I shouldn't have.''
His has since moved from the area but was in Glenorchy for the company's 25th anniversary, held at the Glenorchy Lodge on Saturday.
He was fortunate, he said, to have had a loyal following of bed and breakfast operators, hotel operators and booking agents who ''kept the supply coming''.
He learned to build jet-boats in his backyard in Fernhill and in the early days he collected the customers, drove the boats and was the mechanic.
''I was everything.''
By 1996 the company - with seven boats, nine full-time and four part-time staff, three coaches and a ''significant'' annual turnover - attracted the eye of Shotover Jet, which took over operations.
Ngai Tahu Tourism now owns the company.
