Touring through Africa – on an R1

August 5, 2002

By Dave Abrahams

In 1998 we featured the story of Sjaak Lucassen, who took a Honda Fireblade sports bike (it was what he had!) on a 235 000km odyssey quite literally to the ends of the earth. Now the young potato farmer from Venlo in Holland is at it again, riding a pure sports machine across some of the roughest terrain in the world – by choice.

Lucassen has just completed a 61 000km ride from Utrecht in Holland down the west coast of Africa to Cape Town, including a 500km Sahara crossing and riding through the Congos in the wet season – on a near-standard Yamaha R1.

Articles Lucassen had written during his previous journey had been published by Dutch bike magazine Motoport, leading to a commission for regular adventure stories, and Yamaha NV, the European distributors of bikes bearing the triple tuning fork, came up with a brand new 999cc R1 roadburner (see IOL's attached road test of the latest R1)
Lucassen set out to look for adventure – something to which he admits he's addicted.

.

Arai gave him a racing helmet and Metzeler sponsored the tyres (street tyres – you can't get mudpluggers for an R1!).

Preparations

Mechanically the bike was left absolutely standard; Lucassen cut the saddle in half and built a huge sheet-aluminium box which was mounted directly on to the rear sub-frame. Fearing that the weight of all his gear would collapse the light-alloy tubing he welded aluminium gussets into the triangular spaces between the upper and lower sub-frame rails – his only mistake.

An engineer friend provided three purpose-built flat aluminium containers, each holding 15 litres, to replace the jerry-can he'd lashed across the back of the Honda
Nothing, he said, could have prepared him for the Congolese roads.
. One would hold water, the other two fuel, and they could fit against the inside walls of the box right at the bottom, so that he could lower the centre of gravity of the payload for really difficult terrain.

A little bracket on the upper triple clamp holds a portable GPS and a rack of rugged padlocks; there are 3V and 12V power sockets in the fairing to recharge it and his laptop. No attempt was made to modify the suspension or to increase ground clearance.

Lucassen made his grand departure from a motor show in Utrecht on March 4, 2001 and set out once again to look for adventure – something he admits he's addicted to. Three weeks, 7000km and a ferry ride later he was in Morocco, having visited Belgium, France, Italy, Monaco, Andorra and Spain along the way!



In Spanish Sahara he discovered that the massive castings which form the Y-shaped junction between the mainframe spars, the engine mounts and the rear subframe had begun to crack; he later discovered that the rear frame on an R1 is intended to flex a little and that his gussets had removed this built-in shock absorbing mechanism.

A village blacksmith offered to weld two more gussets across the cracks and Lucassen, left without a choice, reluctantly agreed.

To his surprise and relief the job worked, the welding was neat and the 10mm thick aluminium plate brackets held. Only now, 48 000km down the (very rough) road, are hairline cracks beginning to appear at the corners of the braces.

Once across the Atlas highlands and into Mauretania, he faced potentially the most dangerous part of the trip, the 500km of sifting Sahara sands to Dagana in Senegal. Nobody crosses the Sahara alone, so he teamed up in convoy with a couple of riders on off-road bikes and some trucks.

Crossing the Sahara

He soon learned that there are some simple rules for riding a sports bike in thick soft sand: first, stay out of other vehicles' tracks; second, don't try to steer the bike – let it go where it wants to in the general direction you need and correct your course when you cross the next piece of hard ground, and most important, don't slow down – the bike will dig in and spit you off, and you'll find it very difficult to get going again.

After three days in the dunes Lucassen reckoned he'd got it sorted – so much so that he began using the enormous power of the R1 to play games up and down the dunes while he waited for the rest of the convoy to catch up with him.

Funny - he looks quite normal.

Then it was on through Senegal to Guinea-Bissau and the Ivory Coast, with a 1900km side trip up the Niger river to Timbuktu. After all, he says, who can claim to be an African traveler who has not visited the fabled walled city?

Malaria

This nearly proved to be his undoing, as he contracted malaria in Mali and wound up in hospital, where he suffered his worst injury of the entire journey. He passed out cold in the hospital toilet and dislocated his shoulder as he fell; he lay there for several hours before he was found.

Seemingly unfazed by minor problems like ongoing civil wars, he rode through Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria; by the time he reached the Congo, however, the wet season was in full flood.

The rough part

Nothing, he told IOL, could have prepared him for the Congolese roads, with potholes so deep that the water in them came up to the bike's fuel tank. Soon the bike's radiator was clogged with mud and the engine was overheating badly. He would ride along at 20km/h with the temperature gauge reading 130°C, and then the R1 would drop without warning into 500mm of water, suddenly cooling the motor.

Some of the roads were little better than footpaths, and in several places the gaps between the tree stumps were narrower than his box, which began to look a little battered. His average speed came right down and fuel consumption rose accordingly.

He added a 20-litre plastic jerry can to his special containers, carrying enough fuel to take him 500km under normal circumstances, but which would sometimes last little more than a hundred.

Soon the bike's water pump began to leak and he was glad to take a break in Brazzaville and order a spare seal, as well as a new electric fuel-pump (the original having given up the ghost after repeated dunkings in muddy water).

The parts duly arrived but when he stripped the water pump, he found there was nothing wrong with the seal; all that had happened was that the spring behind the mechanical seal had gone soft after repeatedly being heated and suddenly cooled.

With that fixed the bike soldiered on, now with 40 000 kilometres on the clock and having worn out three sets of tyres, through Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique and right across South Africa to the southernmost tip of Africa.

At 61 000km the R1's clutch had begun to slip and the South African Yamaha distributors provided a spare set of clutch plates, while a local dealer in Cape Town provided workshop space and expert advice – although after this journey it is perhaps Lucassen himself who is the expert on just what you can do with Yamaha's sports flagship.

The ride isn't over yet: He intends to ship the R1 to Argentina and visit every country in South America before moving on to the United States, Canada and Alaska.

Lucassen also remarked that he is already planning the next trip, and that it will be something really radical; when I asked if he intended to ride across Siberia from the Bering straights to Moscow, he just smiled.

On a sports bike again? I asked.

Of course, he said.

You have to admit, the man's crazy – but sometimes the world is better for a little insanity. IOL will keep you up to date with this modern-day Don Quixote in his quest for adventure.