2010 January Jaunt out of Waterdown on Sat. Jan 23

[STeveD]

http://home.cogeco.ca/~kseelenmayer/januaryjaunt/

After Trevor and I, then Ted and Opal managed to tie for first novice last year, our battle continues into intermediate this year!

That leaves novice class open for new SPDA competitors! So, who is going to give the novice championship a shot??

[STeveD]

That was a really good start to the year!! There was good competition in every class! The rally was paced beautifully.... just the right amount of navigator workload in every section.

Opal and I battled Ted and Trevor in Intermediate... we were mostly running expert notes except for a couple of tougher sections in A. A tough battle, with some blown TA's for us, but a missed CP for T2 at the end of Leg B settled it. That was a crazy-busy section wtih a lot of close roads. It was a hard section to do without a calibrate-able rally computer.

Novice class was tight as well. The new team of Mossounov and Magun (at their second rally) placed third, MCO's Brownhill & Corbett in second, and the new team from MLRC's minis last year (the names escape me, but we'll get used to them soon I think) took first!

In expert, the Leonards took (I believe) their first win in that class! :cheer:

So good roads, good road pace, good note pace, good checkpoint locations made a great rally! Well done to Kurt and Dietmar, and all of TAC!

[BruceL]

Good rally! Would have been interesting with snow.

Novice class winners were Glenn Hamilton and his daughter Emma (11 yrs. old).

We were really thrown for a loop when Kurt caught up with us in the last section and told us that we had missed a cp because it had closed (!) and that he was course sweep! Turns out that CP B6 was in the wrong location and nobody hit that CP.

There was less yelling in the car than usual for Jane and I this time...

[STeveD]

You know... one thing we never figured out... but because it wouldn't have changed the end result, we couldn't inquire.

- Our time out for leg B was 18 minutes after Ted and Trevor.
- We were 1.5 minutes late to CP B1, so 19.5 minutes separated
- We got to (IIRC) CP B4 about two minutes ahead of Trevor and Ted in a lineup of cars.
- They had NOT been pushed back extra minutes at CP's because they were lead car on the road. We had been pushed back four minutes on Time Outs, because we were running in a pack of four cars.
- Trevor swears that they did not take a TA before that CP

So when I saw him come in after us at (IIRC) CP B4, I seriously said, "You must have had some trouble!" and he thought I was screwing with him because we somehow got massively early. He thought I was kidding.

How do you close a 23.5 minute gap on the road without the first team using TA's, and without the second team showing massive early penalties and the first team having massive late penalties???

I think that they somehow skated on a massive penalty at an early Leg B CP, where a late penalty must have been miscalculated for them. Afterall, they dropped down to running with us laggards who ate a lot at the Timmies... I would have loved to know, but I couldn't push the issue because it wouldn't have affected the results.


Also funny moment: I had a lot of cookies with me and the CP workers were full by leg B, so I started giving them to competitors. One competitor looked at me funny, thinking I might be giving him laxative laced cookies to take out my competition!!! :lol:

[TrevorH]

STeveD wrote:
I think that they somehow skated on a massive penalty at an early Leg B CP, where a late penalty must have been miscalculated for them.

Granted this would seem like an explanation, but until late in Leg B we were always on route, and weren't passed by any cars (except for some exchanges with a few cars near our run order).

Did you have your route logging with you? It would be interesting to compare the paths we took.

Trev

[TR_Tim]

The TR made it!!!! No issues, no hood-up moments (other than a systems check at the rest halt) and no tools used.

Ok, so we lost our headlights in leg B, but it's not like you'd notice with those old things...

Perry and I had a great time although we need to work out what went wrong at the end of section B2 which threw us off for the next section.

New snow tyres were the dogs bollocks (as we say in Britain) and handling was significantly improved. The marshalls and organisers were very appreciative of us having the old car out - although one asked why would be rallying it in the winter. Our reply? "Why wouldn't we???" There was even the suggestion from one of them that he might bring his old (non-BMW) mini out. That's more like it - we'll take the fight to you Subaru softies!

All in all, a fun time - good, long rally with plenty to keep both team members occupied. Dietmar and his team did a great job.

And yes, we're expecting to have the old beast out again on the Winter Rally :-)

[STeveD]

Trevor and I were very pleased to see you have a MUCH better day than at FFR, Tim!

Perry and Tim had me laughing hard while reading the "Last minute notes" before the rally.

Section B4, 24.60 - dim lights approaching intersection

"Well that's no problem, our lights are always dim."

"You're probably approaching an intersection with a house across the way and you'll be illuminating their bedroom."

"Well I'll have to run up front and blow out one of the candles then."

:muaha: :bow:

A seriously great result! If you share a scan of what the novice B2 notes looked like, we can try to help. If it was the snowmen... check the instructions vs. the official EOS distance. In the intermediate notes they included some extra instructions to keep you going away from the true EOS and dump you in the middle of nowhere, I think. It's a trick the Seelenmayers use often.

And yes, this is a legal trick. Timing pages and EOS notes have to be accurate, but they can include "run on" instructions in the section notes.

When Dennis Wharton (KWRC) uses this trick, he's usually nicer about it. He'll make you do (for example) four left turns around a square and put you back at the same spot as the true EOS, but off by 5 minutes or so. It's actually more devious because you don't realize something is wrong. Ted and Trevor got caught by the Seelenmayer trick last night as well, but realized something was wrong and "made up the time" getting back on route. If it was Dennis style, they probably would have gone on happy as can be and not realized until they checked the results and found a five minute penalty.

[STeveD]

Same results that were shown at the restaurant...

[TR_Tim]

Thanks, Steve - it's exactly as you said. Two extra snowmen after the End Of Section. We'll certainly be noting the EOS distance on the section instructions page in future. Ah well, you live and learn.

If it's easy for you, could you scan and email the CAS sheet for leg A? I just want to check one of them.

Otherwise, we're now planning for the Winter Rally - starting with looking at trailering the TR up to Bancroft and back. Rallying in it all night is plenty - we don't need the extra battering of the trip up and back!

[BryceD]

I think a friend of mine was following you during the JJ Steve.

He's the driver of the black 06 WRX with rota subzeroes.

I pointed him to SPDA :-D