STeveD
04-29-2012, 11:45 AM
It was a great Saturday in Havelock.. A little crisp, but bright, sunny and dry. So unfortunately, no mud covered car pictures after this event. We didn't have a large crowd at this event (10 competitor cars) but there were new faces in the novice group which is great to see! (Almost) Everyone indulged in some hearty and inexpensive breakfast at the Captain's Table. A few navigators had to refrain. Trevor spent most of his breakfast time coaching a new team on some of the instructions they might see.
Louis promised a new route and it was a good one. A few intersections mid-route looked familiar, but there were a lot of new sections. I was surprised at how many T intersections there were with islands in them! These add extra complication for navigators because it technically creates a new road 20m apart, so in a tulip or straightline section, the navigators have to be on the ball.
The OPP seemed to be having a good behaviour blitz day as well in the Havelock area! At least 5 cars were active on the rally route. No rally competitors were stopped, because they're all doing at least 5% below the speed limit, but we observed some locals sat at the side of the road with the OPP for a bit.
It didn't take long for us to make our first mistake in section 2, a straight line diagram for experts. IIRC, I think we had a "Rallying with Ruby" error (where left means right and right means left) and we ended up going a little too far before figuring out that something was wrong. A 1.5 minute TA at CP1 helped us fix that.
Embarassingly enough, Louis had warned us about our second error at the driver's meeting. There was ONE "No Winter Maintenance" road that we would use throughout the rally and I neglected to turn onto it because it looked like someone's driveway. Yup, just like he described at the driver's meeting. I think that Opal told me to look for a left hand turn, not a left hand trail. Doh! I had totally forgotten what Louis said to us a half hour earlier. Trevor was alert enough to have seen Louis on the other side of the road in a small dip peaking up like Kilroy and watching all of the cars struggle with this one. Sure enough, two instructions later, a checkpoint. That was our second Time Allowance (TA) at 6.5 minutes, plus a 0.5 penalty for using a second TA. Needless to say, we started to feel our rally was going pretty crappy at that point.
Then we seemed to get our stuff together for a while. Section 3, a "plot your route on a map" section had just one CP that we zeroed. Yay! Something was going right that day.
Section 4 was fun... a "choose your tulip" array based on what the intersection to end up at looks like. This instruction style has to be done live for the navigator (they can't work ahead.) We zeroed the CP in section 4.
Section 5 had advanced columnar instructions... not too hard for Opal and we zeroed the one CP in section 5 as we exchanged cards with Martin at the CP.
Section 6 had "Rules" which we kind of like. Trevor and Ted ended up on one wonderfully narrow and winding road in this section with a high CAS only to realize about 100m in that they had made a wrong turn about 1km earlier so they shouldn't be there. Ooops. The road was too narrow for a three point turn, so Trevor kept driving, hoping for a driveway or something to turn around in. He didn't find one, but the road widened just enough about another 150m later... and that's when he saw the tire marks from OUR handbrake turn in the middle of the road (still less than 2 lanes wide.) Yup, they were about 7 minutes behind us on the road and finding the same mistake that we made.
BUT! All was not lost! The next CP was timed to the minute. That meant that Opal and I could be up to 59 seconds late and STILL Zero the CP. But the CP came a little too soon, 1.4 km after we were back on route. And it was teasingly visible from a long distance as we crested a hill. Maybe, just maybe, we could zero it. As we're starting to approach though, another competitor in a silver Jeep was getting in our way... literally! They were coming from the opposite direction and they stopped just just to our side of the CP car in the oncoming lane. We wouldn't be able to get through! Well... maybe they left us enough room. "No! No! What are they doing??" ... we see that they start making a labouriously painful to watch three point turn across the road, blocking our path to the CP car. Now we're right on them, at a complete stop, 20 feet from the CP car run by AndrewR and his wife Kolet, and their turn was done, so now they'd go through right? Nope, seems like the navigator wasn't sure if they wanted to do that yet. They hesitated, and the road wasn't big enough to go three wide past the CP car, so I don't attempt to pass because there's no shoulder. Boy, I wish that I had video for this one, though I'd have to censor the language a LOT.... did they even know we were there? Finally, they go through and stop up past the CP car. A 1 minute penalty for us.
Thanks Yevgeniy. :spin: :bangyerhead: :lol:
Then... I get out and ask for my sticker... the driver of the Silver Jeep didn't even get out and get a sticker. They just continued on down the road. Maybe Dan was hesitant to get out of the car after that, but I think they had already been through CP A6 already. ;)
Louis promised a new route and it was a good one. A few intersections mid-route looked familiar, but there were a lot of new sections. I was surprised at how many T intersections there were with islands in them! These add extra complication for navigators because it technically creates a new road 20m apart, so in a tulip or straightline section, the navigators have to be on the ball.
The OPP seemed to be having a good behaviour blitz day as well in the Havelock area! At least 5 cars were active on the rally route. No rally competitors were stopped, because they're all doing at least 5% below the speed limit, but we observed some locals sat at the side of the road with the OPP for a bit.
It didn't take long for us to make our first mistake in section 2, a straight line diagram for experts. IIRC, I think we had a "Rallying with Ruby" error (where left means right and right means left) and we ended up going a little too far before figuring out that something was wrong. A 1.5 minute TA at CP1 helped us fix that.
Embarassingly enough, Louis had warned us about our second error at the driver's meeting. There was ONE "No Winter Maintenance" road that we would use throughout the rally and I neglected to turn onto it because it looked like someone's driveway. Yup, just like he described at the driver's meeting. I think that Opal told me to look for a left hand turn, not a left hand trail. Doh! I had totally forgotten what Louis said to us a half hour earlier. Trevor was alert enough to have seen Louis on the other side of the road in a small dip peaking up like Kilroy and watching all of the cars struggle with this one. Sure enough, two instructions later, a checkpoint. That was our second Time Allowance (TA) at 6.5 minutes, plus a 0.5 penalty for using a second TA. Needless to say, we started to feel our rally was going pretty crappy at that point.
Then we seemed to get our stuff together for a while. Section 3, a "plot your route on a map" section had just one CP that we zeroed. Yay! Something was going right that day.
Section 4 was fun... a "choose your tulip" array based on what the intersection to end up at looks like. This instruction style has to be done live for the navigator (they can't work ahead.) We zeroed the CP in section 4.
Section 5 had advanced columnar instructions... not too hard for Opal and we zeroed the one CP in section 5 as we exchanged cards with Martin at the CP.
Section 6 had "Rules" which we kind of like. Trevor and Ted ended up on one wonderfully narrow and winding road in this section with a high CAS only to realize about 100m in that they had made a wrong turn about 1km earlier so they shouldn't be there. Ooops. The road was too narrow for a three point turn, so Trevor kept driving, hoping for a driveway or something to turn around in. He didn't find one, but the road widened just enough about another 150m later... and that's when he saw the tire marks from OUR handbrake turn in the middle of the road (still less than 2 lanes wide.) Yup, they were about 7 minutes behind us on the road and finding the same mistake that we made.
BUT! All was not lost! The next CP was timed to the minute. That meant that Opal and I could be up to 59 seconds late and STILL Zero the CP. But the CP came a little too soon, 1.4 km after we were back on route. And it was teasingly visible from a long distance as we crested a hill. Maybe, just maybe, we could zero it. As we're starting to approach though, another competitor in a silver Jeep was getting in our way... literally! They were coming from the opposite direction and they stopped just just to our side of the CP car in the oncoming lane. We wouldn't be able to get through! Well... maybe they left us enough room. "No! No! What are they doing??" ... we see that they start making a labouriously painful to watch three point turn across the road, blocking our path to the CP car. Now we're right on them, at a complete stop, 20 feet from the CP car run by AndrewR and his wife Kolet, and their turn was done, so now they'd go through right? Nope, seems like the navigator wasn't sure if they wanted to do that yet. They hesitated, and the road wasn't big enough to go three wide past the CP car, so I don't attempt to pass because there's no shoulder. Boy, I wish that I had video for this one, though I'd have to censor the language a LOT.... did they even know we were there? Finally, they go through and stop up past the CP car. A 1 minute penalty for us.
Thanks Yevgeniy. :spin: :bangyerhead: :lol:
Then... I get out and ask for my sticker... the driver of the Silver Jeep didn't even get out and get a sticker. They just continued on down the road. Maybe Dan was hesitant to get out of the car after that, but I think they had already been through CP A6 already. ;)