2009 Classic Motorcar Rally, Day Two

I wandered out to the parking lot after breakfast while dad attended the “Driver’s Meeting” (really a Navigator’s Meeting) to shoot some photos for upcoming “Name that car” guessing contests. Here’s one for you now in fact:

Yes, the Classic Motorcar Rally has a “modern” division where any post-1979 car can enter. This year we had three entrants, a BMW Z3, a Porsche 911, and the car above.

Those of us “Drivers” with old machines were attending to them: checking oil, warming them up, looking for loose or fallen-off parts. Any owner of an vintage car can relate I’m sure. No parts seem to have fallen off the E-type yet, and while I suspect a few bolts may be loose, I haven’t found them yet. I did top off the car’s oil, as it was down about a quart. (Yes Paul, I only fill to the bottom of the hash marks!)
The car ready, I found Dad just as the meeting was finishing. After yesterday’s Off Course debacle I spent some time after my dad went to sleep with the route instructions and the detailed map of Vancouver Island we bought at a gas station to allow us to find out how to get to lunch without following the route (otherwise we never would have been able to run the second half of the day!) Rally route instructions are vague enough that a map is not really cheating… it does not show you road signs, or how intersections work, which is vital for correct navigation. I did however roughly trace the route and then make notes on the route instructions of where the likely traps were located. We felt far better prepared, and should we get off-course, we should be able to recover much faster.

The first segment was a long TSD’s and we felt like we did very well. It started with miles and miles of 18.7 M(30 km)/ph speeds on a very twisty, one-lane road with NO checkpoints. At least none that we could see. Low speed segments are very tough to do, as you tend to creep ahead, and making alterations and corrections is really hard. For me it was 30 minutes of driving in 1st gear at 3000 RPM, which even in a car as wonderful sounding as the Jag gets on your nerves. We had one bit of excitement midway through when I tapped on the horn as we rounded a blind curve (Dad was warned of the potential of motorcyclists on the road) and the horn stayed on. It took about three minutes of tapping the horn button to get it to turn off. All the while I had to maintain my pace, and drive this crazy one-lane insane road. At least the chance of collision with a biker or deer (which we saw plenty of today!) was reduced for that time. I guess I have to open up the steering column once again once I’m home. The second half of the segment was faster, and covered a lot of ground up the Saanich Peninsula of Vancouver Island. We feel like we were on-time for most, if not all the checkpoints, at least according to our calculations. The next segment was Monte Carlo near the airport with the start at a park, and the stand-off and finish at a school. You had to approach the stand-off from the west, and the finish from the east. The Rallymaster was not there due to some mix-up and the segment did not go off well. We ended up not having enough time to run it as intended (circumnavigating the airport) and gave up to go to the next TSD start. The people who did run the Monte successfully just “cheated” by going past the finish going west, U-turning, and then finishing east-bound. The Monte counted only for bonus points, and we were so far out of the running that a -2 wasn’t going to help us.

The next TSD was insane. Likely the hardest of the whole rally. Endless looping and lots of navigational choices NOT laid out in the route book. These have to be made on the fly, based on the road signs available, even those facing away from you, to determine which is the right road to follow. This segment just looped and looped, with only one checkpoint that we could find, which we passed at least twice:

We felt very confident of our times. We’ll find out Sunday morning how well-placed that confidence was! From the end of this TSD we took a long transit stage to Sidney BC for lunch in a park. Along the way we filled the Jaguar with high-test gasoline:

More to come…