Thursday 13th
We had a late start, after a leisurely breakfast, before heading off to drive around as many of the stages as we could in the afternoon and evening. The notes from our previous recce trip to the island seemed to be consistent; and only a few changes and tweaks were made.
As usual the recce is often the most tiring part of a rally; since it takes a long time to cover all the roads at least twice with the added hit of having to really concentrate all the time on what the calls should be for every corner and hazard on the route.
In combination with our previous trip we now had a set of pacenotes that had been checked over every bit of stage at least twice in the dark; which is the critical bit - since a road takes on a very different shape in the dark even when you have the extra light of a lamp pod. You lose visual clues that you take for granted during the day to help guage the severity of an approaching corner; and the headlights pick up crests that just don't exist in daylight. Overall I was happy with the pacenotes; though trepidation about how to take some of the crests and jumps was creeping in - since I hadn't really classified crests enough - which is something I plan to do for my next trip.
Friday 14th
Scrutineering was a dawdle at the distillary after we had spent a couple of hours finishing off the car. I needed to move the seat and change the steering wheel to get a comfortable driving position - and the steering wheel proved a bit of a hassle; involving a quick trip to the local chandlery to get a screw that could be cut to length to replace the one that had been damaged trying to get the wheel off.
We ended up with a local URL advertised on the windscreen; since the Mishnish pub had a spare sticker; and Gunny who would be servicing for us on Friday night had contacts there. Not sponsorship as such; but I did get a drink bought for me :-)
Being so far down the running order (car 99 of around 150) meant we had time to watch the top seeded competitors over the ramp before we even had to change into our romper suits for our own start.
Finally we were ready; and we joined the queue of cars in the car park waiting to go over the ramp. It was at this point, about 5mins before we were due on the ramp, that we discovered that the intercom battery was flat! After a few minutes of panic DBarritt (car 111) stepped in to save the day by giving us their spare battery. Cheers. It would have been hell driving the roads not being able to hear Chris call the pacenotes. With the pre-start trauma over I was remarkably calm and collected on the start line of the first stage. The Mishnish Lochs stage is one of the easier bits of Mull road; closer to the roads on the Ulster, Manx or Jim Clark events than some of the other bits; so it was the stage I was least worried by.
So the first stage was going quite well; until the first real hard braking point - when the back of the car tried to overtake the front. This was possibly caused by me not bedding in the pads correctly. This gave us a bit of a wake-up call and caused Chris to tell me to slow down since I think he thought I was being reckless. So I wussed it a bit from then on until the end of the stage since I didn't want to push too hard on the brakes in the fast stuff; which meant backing off a bit early and braking much sooner than I would really have liked.
We did catch and pass a car quite near the start of the stage that had obviously had problems; but overall our time was quite disappointing. I cheered myself up later by looking at our in-car footage to see that our pace on the top beside the loch was pretty good compared to the top-boys in-car from the 2004 event (with much faster more powerful machinery); at least up until the braking hard wobbles dented my confidence and caused me to drive with caution over the last half of the stage.
So there was a sense of relief at getting the first stage out of the way, and I was looking forward to the very technical challenge that is the Hill Road. I had been teased by a friend who is very experienced with competing on Mull that he was convinced I would fall off at a tricky corner about 1mile into this stage. Luckily he had teased us during the recce; so I had a chance to "caution" the corner up a bit on one of our slow speed passes... and we made it safely around that one. However, about 2miles into the tricky Hill Road we did fall off! I had changed a note on the recce from a L2 into a L3... and that was a mistake since at rally speed it wasn't a 3 at all. We understeered off; I tried to correct and we bounced along for a bit and landed half-on/half-off the road. Unfortunatelyy the bouncing along the edge of the road meant we didn't have reverse gear any more; so we spent about 7minutes there until some kindly marshals lifted us back onto the road. This was much appreciated since they put a lot of effort into getting us back on the road. Big thanks lads!
As well as no reverse I soon found out that we had a broken steering rack mount; since the steering was a bit hit'n'miss at times. So this meant a very slow journey to the service area. We still had most of the stage to do so I was very careful to ensure that we didn't hold up any of the crews that caught us on the stage as we limped out. Also on the way to service we ascertained that we didn't have 5th gear either. So after a very short amount of competitive mileage I had managed to reduce the performance of the car quite dramatically.
In service Andy and Gunny set about replacing the steering rack mount. Sadly it took the boys so long to replace the mount that we left service 24mins late and hence would be OTL at the end of the leg. We knew this but decided to get some stage mileage in since I want to try and do better on my next visit to the Tour of Mull so some practice would be useful. Even without 5th gear it would still be enough of a challenge to go well over the narrow bumpy stages.
The short Ardtun stage (SS3 and SS4) went OK; if a bit wussy due to me not fully trusting the brakes quite yet. However I was now used to the braking characteristics again - so maybe I should just ensure that the pads are fully bedded in the next time I attempt such a hard braking event; plus having a competitive speed shakedown to get my eye back in would be no bad thing.
Then the fates decided to throw some more problems our way! On the start line of SS5 the fuel pump started to play up. It sounded like a helicopter taking off in the back of the car; and the engine wasn't getting enough fuel to run smoothly. This meant a very slow start to the stage; but once the revs built up under load the engine would suck the fuel and it would keep on song as long as we kept about 5000rpm or so. It did mean we crawled away from the start line though. To add insult to the whole affair about 1mile into this short stage we lost power steering. Which meant a bit of a heavy struggle around the slower corners (due to the nice widy sticky tyres we had on). Everything seemed to be combining to stopping me from setting a competitive time.
So the latest failings now meant we had no reverse or 5th, no power steering and a fuel pump that was playing up. I didn't help when I had a half spin on SS6 when the back went light over a crest into an immediately following corner; which meant we ended up facing more off the road than on, but luckily I could pull the car out forwards and we continued on our way. If we had spun a bit more such that we needed reverse then we would have been doomed; since there was no-one around and we would have been blocking most of what was a narrow section of road.
I have never worked so hard in my life as steering the car around all the hairpins and tight corners. It was a real slow struggle at times; and I have never sweated so much when rallying ever. It seems weird since I have driven many cars without power steering; including one of my current road cars - but it was a real battle of strength to get the rally car to turn corners.
We almost didn't make it into the start of SS7 due to the fuel pump problems. We just rolled into the time control on our minute and whilst at the red board the car died; and it took us about 5minutes to get it restarted; for the now familiar slow crawl off the line until we built up some revs under load. Once the car was going it was at least driveable; given the fact that slow corners were a nightmare due to the lack of power steering and fuel problems - and the fast bits were a pain because we didn't have 5th.
As we expected from service we were declared OTL at the end of leg; but we had at least done all the stage mileage - if not always at any true competitive speed. This meant we were out of the main rally; but at least had the option of competing in the Saturday afternoon and Saturday night Trophy rallies; for cars that were out of the proper event; but were still safe to compete.
Saturday 15th
Unfortunately after a lot of hard work, and various attempts, Andy and Chris failed to fix the gear linkage problem so we would be continuing with only 1st->4th - which isn't a bad set of gears - but it also meant that we ran out of time and failed to do anything with the fuel pump (not having a spare) so we were just hoping that it would work well enough to keep us going.
After being re-scrutineered we set off for the daylight stages. The first afternoon stage SS8 was cancelled due to a bad accident; where one of the crew needed to be taken to hospital with a bad back.
SS12 was cancelled due to a car losing its oil (and the chaos that it had caused), and then SS13 and SS14 were cancelled for the Trophy rally due to organisers running out of road closure time - though in fact they could have gotten us all into the stage ahead of the road opening car within the time. I don't know what happened there really.
We finished in the middle of the small pack of Saturday afternoon Trophy rally finishers, which wasn't bad given our technical woes.
For the final leg of stages another Trophy rally was run; to include those cars that had retired for minor problems on the Saturday afternoon stages.
The first stage of the final leg is known as the "long one", for obvious reasons - being the longest stage on the rally at over 20miles. I really like long stages and tend to do better on them than I do on short stages; so I was looking forward to having a go - but was a bit worried about being caught by the EVO VI that would start the stage 1minute behind us.
We started the stage with the fuel pump playing up a bit; which meant a slow build-up of speed whilst we waited to get some engine load in high rpm in 2nd gear. Once we were rolling the stage was going quite well... up until about 2miles from the end when I got slightly off line over a crest and hit a stone just on the edge of the tarmac that bounced us into a ditch - which we crashed along for about 10metres before stopping 30cm in front of a radio car.
When the car came to a stop I slapped the car into 1st gear and we were off again within seconds - with prompting from Chris you can just hear :-). The bads is we now were travelling with a puncture; a bent wishbone; a bent rear beam and no power steering again. Ho hum. The good news is that the EVO VI that started a minute behind us took 1m50s to pass us after our "moment"; so we were well up on them in that stage too and we would have been set for a reasonable stage time, which I feel happier about, since we had been going reasonably quickly without 5th gear for the fast bits.
Sadly the fuel pump really played up for what would be our final stage; even taking into account all the bent bits that made driving the car a challenge. For a while it looked like we wouldn't be moving at all; since the car was failing to run at all a couple of times in the waits for the stage start. We were now last car on the road - with the road opening vehicle with its flashing lights sitting behind us. We needed a push by the start marshals to get off the line; with the car just crawling along... with it finally kicking into life on a hairpin about half-a-mile into the stage; and in combination with the bent steering I lurched into the bank on the outside of the corner at 10mph. All very embarrassing. After that it was just a slow drive with the car hiccuping all the way over the Mishnish Lochs back to Tobermory - so at the next passage control we just handed in our time cards. It would have taken us ages to drive down to Craignure to the service area; and it was unlikely that we would have got the car fixed enough to make the experience of driving the last few stages enjoyable.
This "early bath" from the second of the Trophy rallies did allow us to grab a shower and something to eat before heading down to the front in Tobermory to watch the finishers reach the final control; with the last cars heading into Tobermory about 5am.
Sunday 16th
Chris needed to get home for work on Monday, so we all left on the first ferry in the morning (after queuing for 4hours to be sure of a slot) and then it was just the long drive home for me - with a particularly slow M6 due to roadworks and volume of traffic.
So we missed the post event partying, and the actual stages were a combination of my mistakes; and general "bad luck" - but the event itself was brilliant fun. The stages really are the most demanding tarmac stages I have ever seen; never mind competed on. I now eagerly await my next attempt on the island!