Just came across these pictures from the beach race – didn’t spot any of the other team members though.
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Filip, Diede and Peter L left St Pete’s yesterday evening and made it to the ferry. Michel and Peter T are staying for some partying and will be boarding the ferry tomorrow. Some more detailed updates: Michel’s D3 did fine, but had one glitch during a long river crossing where the ECUs stopped communicating, which caused it to go into all sorts of failsafes and get stuck. Machine, Peter’s D1, broke a shock but they had it welded and it seems to be holding up. Piper, the P38, has some problems with the transfer box actuation, but a manual override solved that. There’s also a crack forming in the windshield, and the shocks and shock bushings are shot. The team arrived at the last camp. It’s very hot there (30°C+) and it’s as if the swamp has dried up. All cars are holding up well. Russia is taking its toll on the cars now, but they’re still going strong! The damage mentioned in the previous post was a broken shock (now welded) and a burst servo hose (also fixed). Michel’s D3 went into transmission failure in the middle of a little lake (it does that from time to time), giving the boys a good opportunity to test out Piper’s winch. Just got word that they encountered a swampy bit of rockcrawling. They also had a rally-style stage (not sure whether it’s an actual rally stage or just the nightstage) where they ran into a bit of damage. Next up: beachrace! The second roadbook went well. The team encountered some properly swampy stuff where Piper got a bit of a workout after they took one of Filip’s famous “shortcuts” (for reference, see one of last year’s trip report posts with Q trying to keep both the air intake and the ECU out of the water). Just had word from Peter the first day’s road book was successfully completed! Hot news, the lads are now 150 clicks from Saint Petersburg!! They’ve entered Mother Russia! At midnight on 2011-05-31, the team arrived at the ferry in Travemunde after a thankfully uneventful trip. This year the team consists of three cars driving Grand Tourism:
More updates will follow as they come in. Camp 3-4, Quest, camp 5-6-7
The briefing this morning teaches us instead of the usual “green” and “yellow” routes, today will contain a “red” (optional) route. We decide to tackle it On the way to it, we cross a “bridge” after which the drop is tall enough to hit my Dixon Bate towing hook on the concrete … on a public road which according to the map should be a proper road 
We arrive at the start of the Red route without any problems. Props for the organization, as there are marshals who check all cars going in have a working winch. Promising And indeed, they delivered! The route quickly becomes vague due to overgrowing vegetation, and we soon decide to drop the tires to “offroad pressure”. 
Not much later, we break out the winch for the first of many times. Beautiful section, with kilometers and kilometers of lost-in-the-forest tracks and trails, deep ruts, muddy stuff. Some timber sections (forestry sites scattered with timber, tree stumps, …). Then, probably the most technically challenging part for my car: It’s a 100 meters long section of deep ruts, 2 or 3 tracks wide (when ruts get too deep, Russian tradition is to just make a new track around it, through any vegetation that might be there 
We walk the way to do the reconnaissance, and decide on a different path, zigzagging between the trees and rocks, so to drive over the rocks with the wheels to avoid them catching on the underside or axle casings. And so we proceed: driving slowly, crawling really, taking a daring route with occasions of only centimeters clearance from trees, but we manage to drive through without winching! Adrenalin rushes! 
After that comes the much-feared river crossing. I’d seen many cars winch through, of which a defender on 33’s, with water as high up as halfway the doors, and axle casings sounding like they were hitting about every single rock at the bottom of that river! Discussing the route I’m planning to take, Alexander (marshal) beautifully says: “It is our opinion, the trajectory is the most important, it should be known here, not there!” (pointing at his feet, then at the water). He goes on to say all locals cross it following the path I had just proposed … cool 
But before we can enter the water, the line of cars in front of us has to go … unfortunately for them, the last car in front of us, the Discovery, is having engine problems at this point, stalled it and couldn’t get it started back up (bendix broken or playing up). So, we winch them up a couple of metres before the river, and with help from the marshals and the local crazy Russian ”Grisha”, the “local expert”, they manage to get it running again. They cross the river, and so do we, without winching, through a carefully picked out route, without hitting any rocks! Goodie! 
Of course, we don’t just drive off after the river crossing, but rather take the lead and escorte the discovery out, which on top of the engine starting issues is now having what seems like a slipping clutch. This part, which still is about 10km, has a strong Camel Trophy feeling to it! Humping around in the ruts, seeing the Disco do the same in the rear view mirror, miles and miles away from any civilization … this is what we came here to do! Oleg, our Russo-Swiss friend and copilot of the Disco, helps out on both cars, wherever there’s winching work to do, he’s there. Hat tip to you, Oleg! The marshals had decided to follow us as well, on foot that is, as their cars were parked out of the woods, and are helping out on the disco. 
Lots of winching later, both cars come to a difficult choice: Either straight on, 50meters through the swamp, or a very challenging mud ruts, rocks and trees, up and down route around it. Given the Disco’s difficulty to put power to the wheels (clutch), they prefer to go through the swamp, and probably winch, but in a straight line. We go for the latter choice, as we like driving better than winching, and we meet up a bit later where we pull the disco’s engine back to life once more. Some kilometer later, we’re out of the hard part, and “only” have 200 km left to the new camp! We remain with the Discovery, and drive easily to spare their clutch. Both Landies gets to camp without further problems, although quite late. 
Arriving in camp, we set it up without further a due, and cook us a nice meal. Too tired for socializing much, we get some well-earned sleep. |
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