Before breakfast, I headed out of the hotel to fit our scarf filter. Being a slightly earlier riser than myself, Richard had managed to persuade Greg Newton, from car 5, to part with one of his spare carb socks, which of course freed our previous evenings purchase. Obviously not ideal but better than nothing.
With that job out of the way, it was time to grab a bit of breakfast before the run out to the desert. Having a bit of a sweet tooth I was a bit spoilt for choice.
As we were now the last car still in the event, we were requested to collect the Yellowbrick boards from the first two controls. Such responsibility. We were humbled.
We had a 234k run out to the first of the days stages. As he had had some driving experience in the desert Richard, was to be driver for the day. As we were now up to speed car wise, we were able to enjoy the drive & take a break with the rest of the crews.
While we had been on the ferry, Kim Banister had loaded "Routes" for the 3 desert stages, so I was reasonably happy about heading off into the desert.[Oh Dear!]
5,4,3,2,1 Yellowbrick off. The first part of the stage was OK, the route was obvious but I wasn't really getting on with the GPS, relying more on the road book. Between "head for a gap in the mountains" & "go left at arrow" trying to look at the GPS & road book & trying to spot the said landmarks, while doing a very respectable speed[well done Richard], I had started to get quite worried. Then Richard spotted the arrow & all at once everything seemed to come together. The GPS started to make sense & with a bit of growing confidence we started to speed up. We were probably about a third of the way throught the stage, when we came round a sweeping left hander to be confronted by loads of stationary cars. It seems that some locals had been in the stage earlier & had churned up the sand. There were a couple of large rocks either side of the track and cars were stuck in the soft sand. Cars were trying to get out using sand ladders, some were trying to dig themselves out & some were trying to tow others out. Then cars started to come back from further in the stage, Owen Turner & some of the other leaders were stuck & we were led to believe that the stage was blocked.
We decided to try to get to stage 2, so turned around & retraced our steps. Although we had a way point for the start of the 2nd stage, we, along with the other crews we were with, could not find the start. Time to cut to the rest halt & make sure we were there on time. Lots of local interest at the Kart track with some quick specials blasting around, covering everyone with sand, as if we weren't covered enough.
Kim Banister was marshaling the start of the final WRC section & I just clarified the "Routes" concept in my head before we set off. We had a good stage taking time out of several crews.
We were due in Safaga for the 4.00am ferry to Saudi & had thought we could grab a shower before leaving. A trickle, was paying the drops that made it out of the tap, a huge compliment, so that was a no,no. There was a bonus to all this. The bar was free & the food was good, so the time not spent in the shower could be put to good use.
Egyptian TV was also on hand, & when they heard me say something complimentary about the country, asked me if I would say it for the camera. They were in fact trying to get us to say that we thought the country was safe enough for tourists to return to & ask for impressions of the country,[As we had had a security shadow all the time I don't think we were the right people to ask], after me it was Christine Sommers turn, I think they were trying to get as many different nationalities as possible to speak up.
So having had a few hours R&R it was time to head for the ferry & what we hoped would be a slightly speedier passage through customs before trying to get a few hours sleep. "Turbo" turned up at the docks complete with a new headlight unit FOC [thank you Egyptian MSA] & then helped ease our way out of the country.
