Hi All
I’ll keep this brief as unfortunately I don’t have the internet access I was expecting throughout the week (the ‘organisation’ has now password protected it and we have to troop up to another hotel!) – Basically we have just finished day 3 with stonking results!
Also if you want to to see me racing alongside (all right several hours behind!) world champions Cyril Despres and Marc Coma in real time check out this link:
http:vulcain.iritrack.net/tdcom/eviewer/shamrock2010
(click on Moto and tick my race number 207 to see where I am!)
It’s been a hectic week or two since I decided to go for the Morroco Rally at the last minute and the pace has been even more frantic since arriving!
After 14 hours travelling on Friday (including an 8 hour taxi ride), and then prepping and sorting out the bikes on Saturday. On Sunday we had a full day of admin checks (all our documentation, licenses paperwork etc) which mostly consisted of paying large amounts of money out! Followed by a timed session to fit all the GPS, Satellite comms and navigation gear we had just bought or hired to our bikes and then present our bikes for scrutineering checks. We then had Navigation and safety talks to attend before getting our ‘roadbooks’ (navigation icons on long scrolls of paper used to navigate like orienteering) marked up and fitted – We were finally done in time for the official dinner and race briefing at 8.30pm!
Cyril Depres (World Champion) bike gets inspected at Scrutineering
Day 1 – was a 6 hour long race with a very varied course with a bit of everything – stony tracks, sand dunes, gravel and river beds etc. Toby and I planned to race together and worked well (especially when my navigation gear packed up – my ICO or mileometer packed up which makes navigation very difficult!) We did OK for our first day and made it back in our allotted time.
The Pilots Instruments - (from Top: ICO, Balise ditress alarm, Roadbook and GPS (on top of the Iritrack gps tracker)
Day 2 – through the dunes! This was a harder day both in terms of riding and navigation. We were due to do 2 laps of 130km, we also picked up Paul (another Desert Rose rider) along the way and ended up as all riding together, but didn’t make it back to the end of the first lap in time. After 4 hours we were 2 minutes over and they wouldn’t let us out again which meant we incurred a 5 hour time penalty overall. But we made the most of the afternoon spare!
Day 3 – Ideal conditions (some rain overnight so less dust, cloudy so not so hot and a bit of wind) Very fast tracks that were mostly well defined so navigation wasn’t a problem and Toby and I were on it only stopping once outside our scheduled checkpoint and refueling stops. As a result we had a blast of a day topping out at 145kph across a chod/dry lake bed and hitting some brilliant tracks. We also managed to win our class for the day! Check out the results at the NPO tracking webpage (Although I started first and finished first today, Toby and I will be swapping places as we take turns starting and leading through out the week and today he took the win but we’re effectively riding together – honest! 
)
So today was great and we’ll see how we do tomorrow! For Fuller reports see Toby’s Site and I’ll try and update you before the end of the week with a fuller report and action photos to follow!
Cheers all
Jago
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