Tuareg Rallye 2015: Race Day 1 - Ouarzazate to Zagora

Sunday: Time for the race to start!

It didn’t start well when we couldn’t find the keys to the hire car, not too much of a problem for me as I had all my kit for the day but my two crates of spares etc. were locked in the boot. Leaving John to sort it, I headed off to the start. Well not exactly as the bike didn’t want to start and I managed to flatten the battery trying. I eventually managed to kick start it and was on my way.

A short drive out of town took us to the start of the prologue, that was to decide our starting times. This consisted of a Le Mans style start and a 4 km sprint up a dry river valley (a Qued) that consisted of deep gravel, not easy to ride at all!

My start didn’t go too well as the bike once again refused to start! And of course the battery was still flat. I was eventually manhandled from my bike by a bunch of excited Italians, one of whom kick started the bike for me and they sent me on my way. Amazingly I wasn’t last as I passed two riders on the track, both of whom it transpired were with the Italian team!

Arriving at the finish of the prologue, I was given my timecard for the day, my late finish just meant I was one of the last to start the first special stage, that started a couple of Km away along a tarmac road. This turned out to be very fortuitous as it gave me plenty of time to fix a subsequent “issue”.

I was chatting to some of the guys racing with Desert Rose Racing when Clive “Zippy” Town from the team asked why my right boot was covered in oil? I didn’t have a clue so we headed over to the bike to find oil pouring from the top of the engine. Zippy took me over to his van and we stripped off the seat and tank, to find a bolt that retains the rocker shaft had vibrated loose, this was the source of the leak.

Luckily I hadn’t lost the bolt so Zippy tightened it for me and topped up my oil, the bike taking 0.5 of a litre, a bit worrying when it only holds 1.25 litres in total. As it turned out a check that evening showed the oil level too be way too high so it had lost a lot less than we thought.

The stage got underway and was quite uneventful, long stony trails very similar to what I am used to racing on back home were the order of the dayJ and I had a great time with no problems on navigation. I eventually rolled into Zagora after 240kms.

The only down side was at the end as the Moto Pros did an extra 20km of special but us amateurs had nearly 40km of (very straight) tarmac to finish off with…. Boring!

I arrived to discover John was still in Ouarzazate, the keys were well and truly lost! He had gone to the local Hertz office to find them shut but had managed to get hold of someone on the phone and they had turned up. The spare key would have to come from Casablanca and there would be a €600 fine for losing it. The worst news was it would be there until the next day so John was stuck there with all of our luggage. I texted him and said I’d pay for a taxi to travel the 150km to Zagora so he could bring the bags and have somewhere to sleep and then for another in the morning to collect the car. I didn’t get a reply but was now at the hotel but they wouldn’t let me into the room as it was booked in John’s name and I didn’t have my passport with me. The Organisation eventually sorted that for me and Radu’s wife Anny gave me a T-Shirt to wear so I could go and have a shower. I then had to put my dusty, sweaty bike jeans back on and wore the inner booties from my TCX Pro 2.1’s as shoes, to go to the briefing that night.
John eventually turned up at the end, about 9.00pm having blagged a replacement hire car (at no additional cost) and driven over. It turned out there was no guarantee the spare key would turn up the next day so decided we could live without the two boxes of kit and pick them up again in Ouarzazate on the last day. This meant not having any spare goggles or gloves and having borrow, steal, buy or otherwise blag spares etc but at least John wouldn’t have a 300km drive the next day, before having to drive to Merzouga! I quickly then changed into some clean kit and we had dinner before hitting our beds. Our room had a nice long sofa, so Radu joined again, he and Elvis had a good day, coming fourth in the prologue in the Pro Car Category in their Mitsubishi Pajero Evo.

Tuareg Rally 2015: T Day -1

Saturday:

 

After a comfy night in the hotel, we arose to check the bike over in daylight, unload it from the trailer and get ready for registration and scrutineering. 

This involved an awful lot of queuing in the very hot sun! It did seem a bit strange to do this just outside the nice cool hotel lounge which would have been much preferable. The basic check of our documents got us our road books for the week, stickers and race numbers for the bike and really important stuff, like meal vouchers for the hotels!

 

 

After this had to go and sticker up the bike with mandatory sponsors stickers and race numbers before bringing it back into the blazing sun for scrutineering. This consisted of checking our safety kit (first aid kit, flares, lighter, space blanket and 4 litres of water capacity). The checking of the bike was rudimentary to say the least, a quick bounce of the bike and check of the brakes and it was done!

 

Then they demanded that we had Moroccan SIM cards for our phones and were really surprised when I showed them I already had the ability to roam on all Moroccan networks? Ironically the two networks they insisted we had the ability to use had no signal at the hotel but when I was asked to call the organisers phone to prove I had the ability, I just used a different network. I was not convinced of the "safety aspects" of this process.

Lastly came the check of the SPOT Tracker device. Most competitors had chosen to hire one for the duration yet it still seemed a laborious task to check the (organisation's own) trackers! I confused them further when I produced John's tracker that I was borrowing as this was an older model and they claimed it did not have the necessary functionality. We were able to demonstrate that once paired with my phone via Bluetooth it had all the functionality required.

We were informed that spot checks would be held each day on safety equipment but apart from a check the next day to see that our SPOT trackers were working before we started Special Stage 1, this was the last I heard of these,

The checks all being complete, we retired to the restaurant for a leisurely lunch beside the pool. Hard work this rallying you know!

 

That evening we sat through what seemed like hours of the first race briefing, which was most probably because it did take hours! After this we finally got dinner and then decided it was time for bed. Annoyingly the organisation decided to run on "Rally Time" which was of course Central European Time, very convenient for the German organisation but downright confusing for those of us on Greenwich Mean Time, which of course included the whole of Morocco! This meant that the six o'clock alarm the next morning was actually 05.00 for us!

Radu had decided that sleeping in the back of his converted ambulance, was getting a bit too cramped so retreated to the floor of the room John and I were sharing! The built in sofa provided a handy mattress for him. In previous years the organisers had provided tents for those competitors who did not opt for hotel accommodation, however these were conspicuous by their absence... they had just forgotten to let anyone know about the change of plan! Tents were promised at Merzouga but that was still two days away.

I'm sure you can imagine what the snoring might be like with three blokes sharing a hotel room but luckily John and I had come prepared with plentiful supplies of ear plugs! Radu just said that having a 9 month old had made him immune and promptly demonstrated by going straight off to sleep!

Ready for tomorrow's early start and Race Day!

Tuareg Rallye 2015: T Day -2

Ok so let's try and get things updated.

Apologies for anyone who has followed my posts on the Nomad Racing page on Facebook or on ADV Rider as you will now get pretty much the same, although now with the chance of reflection and looking back over the road books, I will be adding some extra detail and hopefully a few extra photos:

The fun and games commenced the moment we arrived in country....

Friday: Toureg Rallye -2

Arrived in Marrakech at 6.30pm and collected the hire car, got to the exit to the car park expecting to find some road signs to guide us to Ouarzazate.... No such luck!

John and I had downloaded Moroccan maps to our GPSs but mine couldn't be found on the device, heck even Marrakech wasn't showing on the extremely basic map that we could see. John's GPS was still in his suitcase but we later established the detail was insufficient to follow on his too.

 

A local sitting by the exit approached us and offered to lead us out to the correct road and jumped on his moped. We then had a mad dash across Marrakech through various short cuts with John and I thinking it must be some sort of scam, all the while following this crazily ridden moped.

 

The Marrakech traffic was something to behold, pure third world motoring with cars, buses, trucks, horse carts, motorbikes, donkeys and pedestrians, seemingly going in all directions at once! This continue until, sure enough he delivered us onto a main road leading out of town and told us this was the route to Ouarzazate. We had to take his word for it but we could establish it was heading out of the city so seemed OK. Then of course the negotiations started and we had to tell him we had no Dirhams yet. "No problem I take Euros" he says, yes but we have come from the UK so why the heck would we have Euros? We eventually settled on £10 Sterling, a bargain we decided!

Following the route which did turn out to be the main road to Fez, we then soon took a right hand turn towards Ouarzazate having seen a road sign at long last. This headed for the Tizi n'Ticha pass over the High Atlas just as the light started to fade!

This was a thrill a minute drive with crumbling roads, endless bends, locals on mopeds with no lights, pedestrians just ambling in the road and of course for me, all whilst driving on the "wrong" side of the road! the road eventually started climbing and lit only by a very impressive moon, we wound our way over the pass, having great fun trying to overtake lumbering, overloaded trucks that were reduced to a crawl on the steep slopes. 

We looked for somewhere to stop and eat but it was getting late and we still had not had a chance to get any Moroccan money and those places we did pass, didn't look very inviting. We also passed several Police checkpoints run by the Gendarmerie Royale but as soon as they saw we were foreigners, they just waved us through.

We arrived in Ouarzazate with the only clue to the location of the hotel being it was "next to the airport", apparently I should have received an email with the details but couldn't find it on my phone. At the obligatory Police checkpoint on the edge of town we stopped even though they were trying to wave us on and asked directions. Good job our basic French stretched to "Ou est l'aeroport?" The Police guided us there (thankfully it was just "go to the big roundabout and turn left") only to find..... nothing! The airport was deserted with no signs of any hotels nearby and certainly not any sign of 300 odd rally competitors. John recalled from the website that the official hotel was near the Ibis so we asked a local for directions and he guided us to the correct part of town. This was rather confusing and in the end John switched on data roaming on his phone, got the Hotel Ibis on Google Maps and we eventually arrived at the hotel at 10.30 that night. He later discovered that download had cost him £20!

We met up with Radu, Anny, Sophia and Elvis, who had taken the long way round via Agadir to avoid the Tizi n'Ticha pass and had only recently arrived themselves. I saw that the bike was fine and we checked in. Of course the restaurant had closed and we hadn't eaten since the plane, so headed into town via a cashpoint only to find the only thing open was a souvenir shop but that thankfully had crisps, chocolate and bottled drinks for sale.

We eventually turned in ready for a day of admin…

Tuareg Rallye 2015

Apologies to anyone who had been hoping to follow my progress at the Tuareg Rallye via this blog. The lack of time and infrequent WiFi meant I was restricted to posting on my own timeline on Facebook. However I will be posting up some more comprehensive, retrospective reports over the next few days.

It was not without it's epic moments, from loosing the keys to the hire car, a loose bolt on day one causing a massive oil leak (luckily spotted before any harm was done), getting stuck for an hour in possibly the only mud in Morocco, two days in the dunes of the Erg Chebi with no electric start, looping the bike off the top of a dune (yet walking away unscathed), my GPS packing up due to the heat just before a dune section where the road book said "follow GPS", A fork seal blowing and losing my side stand on day five to name a few!

Here's a few photos from the rally where I was very happy not only to finish but also to gain third place overall in the Moto Amateur over 50s Category.

  

 

Bike loaded and ready to leave the UK on 03.03.15

The route of the Rally

Day 1: Ouarzazate to Zagora

Day 2: Zagora to Merzouga

Day 3: The "King Stage" Merzouga (Erg Chebi)

Day 4: The "Dune Race" Merzouga (Erg Chebi)

Day 5: Merzouga to Zagora

Day 6: Zagora - Erg Chigaga

Day 7: Zagora to Ouarzazate

 

The Hotel in Ouarzazate

 

The queue for registration

 



 It's a hard life being Team Manager!

 

The Pro Class at the start of the Prologue

 

 

Checkpoint 1 Zagora to Merzouga Day 2

Whoops!

Run out of fuel on the road to Merzouga, luckily I was rescued by another competitor

Sunrise over Erg Chebi

 Doing a bit of Laundry

Start of the Dune Race

End of Lap one, timed out by only three minutes

 The result of a little cartwheel off the top of a dune

With Gary Pitchford at the final checkpoint, Day 4

Checkpoint 4, Day 6

All the kit for a day laid out

Finished!

 

 

 

Lunch stop on the way back to Marrakech Airport, on the Tizi n'Tichca Pass

 

We got a space on the sticker wall!

From Desert to snow capped mountains all in one day

Busy, busy, busy....

I've been a bit busy with bike preparation so haven't had the chance to update lately!
As previously reported the Rally Experience Weekend never happened due to the weather, which is a shame but I guess the risk of breaking something (either me or the bike) this close to the Tuareg was a good enough reason not to go schlepping round Wales in the ice and snow.
And as mentioned I took the opportunity to start the preparatory maintenance, which is still on-going but I have to date:

• Replaced wheel bearings in both front wheels.
• Replaced the wheel bearings in my spare rear wheel
• Fitted a disc and speedo magnet to the spare front wheel
• Replaced the steering head bearings
• Had the swing arm bearings and lower shock mount replaced (I couldn't get them to move in the end so entrusted the job to Torque Racing).
• Changed oil and filters
• Fitted new front brake pads
• Cleaned the current air filter
• Replaced and re-routed the front brake hose
• Fitted new handlebars (Renthall RC High Fat Bars)
• Re-wired the light switches
• Stripped off the graphics ready for re-stickering
• Fitted a Scotts Steering Damper (a second hand bargain)
• Fitted new foam rally grips
• Fitted extended foot pegs
• Fitted a new gear lever (old one strapped to the frame as a spare 

Still to do is:

• Fit rear brake pads
• Replace brake fluid in rear brake and bleed
• Refill front brake fluid and bleed
• Fit new chain and sprockets
• Check and adjust the valve clearances
• Oil the seven spare air filters, roll them and seal in zip lock bags (one for every day of the rally plus one spare to tuck in the space behind the air box)
• Replace a threaded insert that stripped in the frame tube under the engine that holds the bash plate on
• Fit new tyres and mousses to the original wheels.

and

• Finish rebuilding the whole thing (not forgetting to put thread lock on every bolt)!

And one other non essential job that I'll do if I get the time is:

• Build a new mounting for the tail light and replace tail light and a new LED "dust light" as previously mentioned (the current lights work OK so I won't lose sleep if I don't get round to it).

And I'm sure I'll find a dozen other things to do.... It never ends!!!

 Looking a bit sparse at this stage

 Shiny things! New Handlebars and steering damper

 Slowly going back together!

Yesterday I popped into the KTM Centre to collected my sponsored goodies, they are still sitting in a very large cardboard box, so tonight I'll drag them out and give them a try.