Morocco done and dusty

Well we’ve finished all the Special stages in Morocco, just a little 200 klm or so guant to the ferry now. And after an up and down race with tails of joy and woe, we weirdly came in as the fastest Wildcat on the final stage, which give us the first and last stages to our name! There’s a small 1klm show case stage in Spain tomorrow and then the after party.

Into the mist

Finally day in Morocco about to start, Tony’s back in the hot seat today. We have two specials on fast open tracks and in a very thick fog, bonus side is no dust.

Day 6 done

Well today, the plan was to be a good day, and it was, but about 4 klms from the start we had to take a route in wet dunes that we hadn’t planned to take and I ended up getting stuck in a sand bowl again – badly. Rain makes dunes even harder!! We eventually got out, try to help another car to no avail and lost around an hour. The rest of the stage was a proper blast and thanks to a good nav call by Tom, we made it to CP in time, then only to find that the 2nd stage was cancelled due to the rain fall were having in northern morocco! We did the liaison stage to the tonight camp and had a good convoy of 5 wildcats doing it. We stopped at one point to discuss route, and I got a bit robbed. So if my spot tracker keeps popping up saying that I’m some random place in the desert, don’t worry I’m not lost or in danger, some little thieving tow rag swiped it off the back of the RatCat!!!

SS7 start

We have had a team swap around today to try different dynamics of our set up, so Tom in with me today, small dune start then back on to the fast stuff for the rest. It’s also rained so hopefully it will suit us more today.

Ready to roll again!!

The RatCat his all fixed and were ready for the off again. Today we’re doing a 20klm lap 4 times around a large dune. A big comp for us! Hopefully the wildcats should be in there element today. For the bikes they have to get to the top of the big dune at the end.

Dune lessons learned!

Well we had a cracking start today, bolted out the blocks for the Baja start and Tony’s naving was spot on, but after CP3 we hit a different type of dune field and on a knife edge dune I got more grip than I thought and didn’t take it an angle, the result a nose dive and just enough momentum to go over onto the roof. We’re both fine, cosmetics only and we carried on after filling back up with oil and pushing the windscreen out, sadly an engine mount also sheared, so after the first lap we retired and gave RatCat back to the crew to do there thing! Chewie was not happy! Sorry Chewie.

Baja start

This morning we start Baja style, including an MAN race truck, think I stay away from that one.

Special 5 about to start

It’s going to be an interesting day, 4 laps of the dunes totaling 200 kms eek…..bring it on

3rd day – not so good!

Had a fun day and probably learnt every lesson in the book as far as dune driving goes. But! We have had a massive misfire on the engine for a good portion of the day, and that doesn’t make dune driving easy, we managed to get by with a slow pace having to chose a path that didn’t involve and steep climbs. Eventually I made a bad choice of going into a sand bowl that we didn’t have the power to get out of. And that put us out of time for today. The crew is on the case now so I’m sure we’ll all good for tomorrow.

Base camp

With are now at Hotel La Tuareg at getting a bit of r&r. The crew have been doing a brill job working on the cars getting them ready for tomorrow’s non stop stage. I think tomorrows going to be a hard one, and as for Wednesday, the nightlight in are rally bible just say – Dunes, dunes, dunes !!!