rallye de tunisie - race day

the days route took us south east to a palmerie right on the edge of the sahara, ksar ghilane. 50kms of fast track took us straight into the dunettes (small dunes) which proved hard going on the first day.

we were on the edge of the sahara and had ridden across this section of dunes to get here, it really is an ocean of dunes.
















day one is always tough, you've been traveling, all the adrenaline, acclimatising to the weather, the food, different hours etc, and then you've got to jump onto your bike and start reading a roadbook that you haven't seen before nor used for 6 months!!

still, i had problems within the first 10 mins, my roadbook bracket sheared again. zip ties did thr trick but it lost me both time and the use of my gps as the sharp metal edge severed the aerial cable! then to top it all my ico stopped working!

so having navigating with jago leading, our next challenge was lack of fuel. although there were regular fuel stops, the route was demanding on our little engines  and we ran out 8km short of the next fuel stop. we were in the middle of the dunes, it was bloody hot and i was stuck in a depression that jago went past.

a beautiful, hot and sunny day, with only a slight breeze meant no need for a fly sheet....

a helicopter had landed about 100m from me to drop the medics off to deal with a tunisian quad rider suffering from exposure. i decided to head ovef on foot to see if i could borrow some fuel and found jago had done he same thing!

home for the week.

now repatriated we raced to the next check point for a proper fuel stop and then bashed through thr final leg to finish in 8 hours, sadly outside the 7 hour limit which resulted in a 2 hour penalty! kick you when you're down!! the fuel issue had cost us over an hour plus the penalty.....would be carrying spare fuel for our next dune day!

wc