2009 Spring Run Off Rally

[STeveD]

Rally this Saturday just east of Peterborough. Last year's was VERY newbie friendly. Very simple instructions.

Event info: http://www.pmsc.on.ca/PMSC/Events.html

If anyone wants to give it a try, let us know how we can help you get started in Nav Rally.

[rmoore]

Just to make sure nobody got confused--the PMSC website had a Google Map up with the flyer for this event, and Google was wrong! They've corrected the map now, but the rally definitely starts in the Town of Hastings (not Hastings County!!). Closer! and besides, I've always liked The Captain's Table. See you there!

[madgen]

Jes' a gentle reminder to Steve that the rally is tomorrow and not next Saturday. I hear that he gets confused sometimes... :-D

[STeveD]

Getting there:

So, Opal and I did our now usual day-before-the-event practice run. This involved soldering new quick connects into the STi, and correcting a small wiring error on the Terratrip's DSI. My bad. :oops: Good thing we did it though to shake off the cobwebs! It had been since January 3 that we drove a true NavEx style rally and we got caught out on a trick or two.

On the morning of, we left for Hastings at 7am and arrived early enough to find The Captain's Table. The flyer for the event had the wrong address for the restaurant, but it was easily found if you just looked for all of the Subarus "downtown".

A post-registration Hungry-Man Breakfast included eggs, home fries, and FOUR types of meat. Yum! Ted was on his usual pre-rally fast, and due to a little food poisoning the day before, even Trevor was fasting. From his colour, we weren't sure who'd be puking first in that team today.

The Driver's meeting mentioned one interesting sounding road... well, not a road. Sort of an off-road trail used by hikers and hunters it seemed. The only novice correction mentioned was that we should take an extra two minutes in this Elapsed Time section to navigate the "Dits" on the trail. As in, minor Ditches running horizontally across our path. Finishing the meeting early left us with about 20 minutes in the car to get sorted. Chat with other teams... make sure ALL of the clocks in the car were ALL on the right minute. :roll: Uhmm... three different minutes were displayed in the cabin at that point.

Off we go...

The ODO check/section 1 left us south of town where Section 2 started with simple distance to turn instructions. We zeroed CP1, and thought we were running 20 seconds late before CP2. We somehow ended up being 10 seconds early though for a "timed to the minute" control. (I think maybe we took someone else's sticker as people were lined up for this CP...?) We also arrived 14 seconds late to CP3 to take a 0.2 penalty there. Trevor and Ted followed us out on the next minute.

Dirty buggers!

Section 3 started in Alderville and was simple tulips. Oddly enough though, Ted and Trevor were quickly right on our butts and trying to occupy the same road space that we were maintaining. We let them pass and they stayed right in front of us. Opal double checked the calculations and we were SURE we were right and that Ted somehow messed up. He is, afterall, a software guy. Following close behind them, we had to back off on N Bethesda due to the dust that Trevor's STi was kicking up. It was unsafe to follow him at less than a 15 second gap.

Through the cloud I saw CP4 after a crest. Damn it! Those buggers! Not only did they mess up their timing, but now they were going to make me use our free TA and take a 0.5 to zero the CP! Argh!

(So umm... it turned out that they were actually on the right minute and we somehow ended up a minute late into that CP to take a 1.0 penalty. Would have been zeroed otherwise. ) (Whoops #1)

We started to realize that the organizer, Louis Carbados had done a perfect job of pacing the novice notes. Opal was able to interpret instructions, maintain Rallycalc timing, and work along with me without undue stress. Our teamwork and pace felt excellent, never stressed, and we were optimistic about a good finish.

Whoops #2

Section Four was a map with standard CAS statements instead of actual distances. e.g.: "Do CAS 60 unless told otherwise...". We saw a few other teams making U-turns in this section, but Opal had us on the right roads from beginning to end. We were maintaining a sedate 45 CAS on Little Road S, south of the western edge of Rice Lake, when a rally competitor passed us. Then another. Hrmm. Must have been a lot of lost competitors! Then an expert team passed us and we thought... uh oh.... what CAS are we supposed to be doing?

Turned out that we should have been doing 60km/h the whole time, not the 45 we WERE doing. Uh oh. We were about 2/3's through the section and were expecting a CP anywhere here. Fortunately, it turned out that we had at least 5km to make up the time and with a little bit of catch up we managed to pull in just 2 seconds too early for CP5! I'll happily take that given how it could have turned out.

Section 5 was out-of-order tulips starting in Gores Landing. We might have messed up the ET at the end of Section Four, or there may have been an error in the notes... because we arrived 36 seconds early for a "timed to the minute" CP 6 and thought we were on time. 5 other novice teams and the Leonards also checked in early on that one, though, but unfortunately T & T weren't a team that did. They zeroed it.

Section 6 was written instructions that needed to be interpreted and plotted onto a map. We started the section wrong by making a right instead of a left. We realized soon enough, got back on route, and calculated a 5.5 TA. Well... we must have gotten something wrong with our TA because we arrived 1.7 minutes early (with the TA) for CP7 at the end of section 6.

Whoops #3

Section 7 had the infamous "off road trail" that we'd heard about at the driver's meeting. We were supposed to do 45 CAS through here and it was a challenge for a bit to do that speed! We got to the end and had to pause a few seconds while Opal calculated if we got the ET right or not. We did... but after the rally Ted cheerfully reminded us of the extra 2 minutes we were supposed to take there. DOH! Sigh... the 0.8 I thought we'd take late into CP 8 would end up being a -1.2 early. Argh!

Section Eight had Columnar instructions with no complex tricks. We arrived at CP 9 7 seconds late to take a 0.1. Whoops! (My estimations of distance are usually too high, so when Opal uses the CP function in Rally Calc, she ends up giving me a later time than we need.)

Section 9 had more Tulips ... you had to select the right tulip from a choice of three as you got to the intersections. CP 10 was easy to see at 11.56km into the 14.35km section. We zeroed it, but I didn't realize that the CP team had a time eight seconds later than when I thought we crossed the board. Hopefully, that -0.1 wouldn't matter later on.

THE Gotcha

Leaving that CP, just 200m up the road around a bend was a hidden CP11. Sort of hidden, anyway. There was Earle Hendersen standing beside his Minivan with a clipboard. I say "Checkpoint Maybe", Opal looks up, and we both spot the sign board at the same time about 30 feet in front of his minivan leaning against a tree. We don't see the Ottawa Mazda that left the last CP one minute ahead of us stopped there and I start to wonder if they didn't stop for it... it was hard to miss though. The van was so obviously placed in the driver's view as we turned the corner and approached the stop sign. Although I showed us crossing the board on the right second, Earl had us crossing 2 seconds earlier. Ah well. Hopefully that -0.1 wouldn't hurt us. From there it was a brief ET to to the Captain's Table.

Over drinks...

T & T arrived before us and over drinks Opal and I started to realize that we were in trouble. I started to calculate our score from our CP log and found a few big penalties. Ted cheerfully mentioned how THEY were on the correct minute for CP4 according to the sticker, and then cheerfully reminded us about the extra 2 minutes we were supposed to take on the off-road trail. DOH! There was three minutes of mistakes right there. On such a simple rally, we figured we were NOT getting first place. then. I glumly asked them, "You didn't happen to miss any CP's did you?"

Trevor said, "Nope! Say Steve, perhaps you'd like to sell me that Timewise since it doesn't look like Ted and I will be allowed to run novice again next year..." Grrr!! But he was right. It sounded like he and Ted had not made any serious mistakes throughout the rally and were going to place well ahead of us. Our result wasn't bad, but it wasn't going to be good enough...

Opal and I hoped for third at this point when a copy of the scoresheet was delivered to our table. Similar to our reaction to our placement at the January Jaunt this year when we miracled into second... HOLY CRAP! How did we manage to get FIRST NOVICE?!??!

[First Printing of the results... incorrect, but you'll get the idea. The pen marks weren't there at first when we were looking at it.]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3629/3465847190_d35491973c_b.jpg

We look down the list of novice finishers for Trevor and Ted as they're the #2 team in the ORRC championship, and of course, the big grudge competitors. 2nd? Nope. 3rd? Nope. 4th, 5th, 6th... nope! 9th!! They were in 9th! And it showed a 20 minute penalty (missed CP or improper CP procedure) for CP11; Earle off to the side of the road just before the end of the rally.

I ask, "You didn't stop for Earle??"
Trevor, "Who's Earle?"
"The guy standing beside his mini-van with a clipboard?"
"No, we saw him, but there was no sign. We thought it was a route control or speed check."
"Yes, the board was at the side of the road about 30 feet in front of his van!"

I'm not sure who was more surprised... Opal and I or Trevor and Ted! But they had somehow missed the CP board... perhaps by focusing totally on the bumper of the van? I don't know. But somehow they and the Ottawa team of Brownhill and Corbett had missed it, too! The only two of the 14 teams entered that did.

There was an error on T&T's CP3 time. Somehow in a 8.3 minute ideal time to travel distance, they manged to arrive 10 minutes early. Hrrmm! Typo. I went up with Trevor to the organizer and Martin from KWRC (doing the scoring) to clear up the error on T&T's CP3. I left them immediately and checked with Evan Holt how they did. (Evan has navigated for me twice in the past.) I originally thought they were in expert, but the PMSC Exec team of Demers and Holt came third just 0.9 points after us. Gulliver and Watson, another PMSC team were in second just 0.2 seconds behind us. A good result for PMSC at their home rally!

We had some REALLY good burgers and discussed the rally. One brutal mistake for T&T, but hell, Opal and I had made enough of them. It was one missed turn at MLWR that cost us Novice win and 2nd overall. Forgetting TA's when we walked back to the CP car has cost Trevor and I wins in the past. Any regular rallyist knows the feeling.

Huh, what?

Then... I guess I have to mention it. The next printing of the results with errors corrected comes out. T&T were 1st novice, Brownhill and Corbett were second, Opal and I were third... what happened?

Well, Louis I guess wanted to make sure that everyone had a fair chance at the rally, and there was a concern raised about the legality of the last CP. So he removed the misses for those two teams, but left all of the other teams with the penalties they incurred there. The CP wasn't thrown out... just two teams' penalties were removed.

Why does this stuff always happen when I DON'T bring my rulebook? Next time I'm bringing it along just as a prophylactic...

It all works out in the end...

To make a long story short, the steward upheld the view that it couldn't be done that way, and that the CP was legal (12 teams found it afterall, and the description of the positioning of the board fell within RSO rules.) So, the final novice podium returned to the same order as previously mentioned. A bit of drama there at the end, but I think that all of the officials did what they were supposed to do in the best interest of the rallyists, and it was all resolved in a friendly manner, and according to proper procedure. Someone remarked that if this was Autoslalom, a war would go on in the forums for months and that appeals would be filed for weeks... But that's the friendly (but competitive!!) rallying community for ya! Maybe it helps that we finish our events over a beer???

We loved every minute of the drive. Just the right complexity for the navigators in Novice... The little bit of mud and loose gravel on some roads made it a lot of fun for the drivers, too! Louis did a great job! Well worth the early hike to Hastings!


http://www.pmsc.on.ca/SRON.jpg


Roger Sanderson and Dennis Wharton won Expert class, just 0.1 ahead of the Leonards making their debut in Expert. The Moores followed in 3rd with a missed CP8 penalty.


http://www.pmsc.on.ca/SROE.jpg




Don't miss the Blossom Rally organized by KWRC in just two weeks on May 2nd!


It's another rally with Dennis Wharton as routemaster, so expect Opal and I to have no hair left at the end of it!! More details here: http://www.kwrc.on.ca/events/blossom/flyer2009.html/

[TrevorH]

Missing that last CP (or rather not stopping for it) was a pretty bitter pill, as it made the difference between 1st place (not 2nd) and the 8th place we ended up with in the end. Still, I can't complain. Rules are rules and they were thoroughly, and fairly considered before a final decision was made.

Congrats to Steve and Opal for their class win.

Thanks to Louis for putting together a great route, and for entertaining perhaps the most thorough post rally discussion of the rule book.

[STeveD]

TrevorH wrote:
... made the difference between 1st place (not 2nd) ...

... fixed, sorry about that. Not sure how you charmed yourself into FIRST after the CP3 correction. ;-)

You guys were kicking butt right up to the third last turn of the rally. Not one CP over a 1.0 penalty...

You two have been forcing us to up our game! It's going to be tooth and nail the rest of the year. You guys beat us at the last Loveridge / Wharton rally (Blossom 2008) and I did badly at their Northern Lights 2007.

Hrmmm. Is it too late to volunteer to green crew this one? :-o ;-)

[madgen]

*sigh* For the want of a nail...

For the record, I'd like to state that it wasn't our team that questioned the legality of CP11. When I saw the missed CP penalty I simply figured we screwed up and that was that, whereas the CP3 glitch that Trev got sorted out was a legitimate typo.

I did point out to Steve, however, that if CP11 was declared illegal and we had won (placing Steve/Opal in 3rd) then SPDA would get 18 points in the club standings rather than the 13 we ended up getting (1st for them, 8th for us). ;-)

And if you discount the scoring mishaps on both of our teams (our CP11 oops and their 2 minute oops), then both our teams were running 1-2 and about a minute apart. In other words, hiccups aside, both of teams did pretty darned well! :cheer:

And, in spite of our final standing, I'll take heart in the fact that Trev and I managed 3 consecutive zeros, we never took a TA, and my stomach behaved itself. :-D

[TrevorH]

Well actually, I did raise a question about the visibility of the CP board, and stated my reason for not stopping, expecting that topic to go nowhere. Louis did consider it though, which is when we were (temporarily) noted in first place.

That was challenged based on the rules, and struck down, at which point someone else ( I'm not sure who ) raised the concern that it wasn't a legal checkpoint, which was also challenged.

So lots of post rally drama, but everyone discussed it all professionally.

It may have been a bit disappointing, but at least I didn't get writers cramp. [wink, wink, nudge, nudge]. :-D

[STeveD]

Very smooth of you, Trevor! And you did just the right thing as a competitor. But unfortunately we've learned that "The rally isn't over until the ruling is written on the last appeal." ;-)

One more thing to add to my Rally kit... "Inquiry" sheets ready to fill out so that I don't have to write as much... :pint:

[TrevorH]

Why don't you just zero more checkpoints? Saves having to write at all. :lol: