By John Glynn. Photos by John Bayliss from Car 37: Volvo 144

The organisers say Day 9 of the 2012 London to CapeTown was the most physically demanding day so far, after so many crews became stuck in the soft sand of the first desert section in Egypt. The ferry that night took them into Duba, to be met by the Saudi Arabia Motorsport Federation. Cars were parked and the crews clambered onto an American schoolbus convoy to ride a short distance for immigration formalities.

That process complete, the rally was set free on the coast road of Saudi Arabia: the first-ever international rally to cross Saudi. After the hectic Egyptian desert, no timing was done during the 307-mile trip, and the first crews had daylight at the finish to check their car over.

Day 11 would be a late-morning start: 213 miles to Jeddah, and the evening ferry that chugs back across the Red Sea to arrive mid-day at Suakin, in Sudan. Tougher days are ahead! (camel pic by Gerard Brown)

Here’s Hayden’s texts from yesterday:

Arriving in Saudi was a pleasant surprise after the trash-strewn landscape in Egypt. By comparison, the Saudi wealth is very much on display with highly developed infrastructure and good roads and far less roadside detritus.

We travelled across the Red Sea on a high speed car ferry catamaran built in Western Australia. We filled up with fuel, which was ridiculously cheap: 2 Cokes, a bag of crisps and a couple of bags of nuts cost more than 60 litres of 95 octane. The store at the gas station was provisioned with the same or more than you would get at a good interstate stop in the USA – massive choice of drinks, candy, biscuits etc. But for the Arabic labelling, you could have been in Nevada or Utah.

Our expectations of improving in the scoring has been defeated by some unfortunate leniency on the day 9 timing and scoring – a stark contrast to how timing was cast earlier in the event. Still plenty of time left, but it is hard to recover time on cancelled stages.

Later text:

Now waiting for the last ferry of the rally, Saudi to Sudan. The run today was uneventful, but for a minature sand storm and a herd of camels.

The overnight stop in Yanbu was a long one with no early start. The locals were pretty light fingered, so the Porsche has lost the crest from the bonnet and a prized BRDC badge. Others lost tools and electronics to the bold and sexually confused teenage boys.

Jeddah is a large city with freeways and large container port. Our ferry to Sudan is an overnight crossing (dry Muslim ship) and we have 700km to cover once we arrive, so hopefully sleep comes easily on the ferry.

Day 12 is 714km with no competition, day 13 has no World Cup sections, but some tight time controls in a landscape and traffic conditions we can’t predict. All to look forward to in the next 48 hours, after a quiet and somewhat relaxing 48 hours preceding.

By John Glynn  -  Photos by Gerard Brown

I’ve been ploughing through a ton of work all weekend while the 2012 London to Capetown Rally was at sea. Today was their first day racing and they moved from paved European roads to sand, with the inevitable consequences of folks getting stuck and quite a few changes in the running order.

Here’s a pic of the 964 Carrera 4 making full disadvantage of its weight: a little bit of ride height is a good idea in the sand. Our boys Caldwell and Burvill are still in 10th position, roughly where they were last time we checked, but the Joost/Jacques 911 is making up some ground: now in 6th place. That is better than it sounds!

Had a good text chat with Hayden earlier, this is what he said: starts while they were coming off the boat yesterday.

HB: Off the ship in Egypt, waiting for customs and immigration to clear us all. Shades of Peking to Paris, but nice and sunny. Saw the day 6 results on the ship, made some time by cleaning on a couple, fast time on one heads up against the whole field – which I am sure you saw. Car is running fine, we had 60 minutes service time on the ferry and everything still looks good. Had to swap a broken oil pressure light switch, the Greek technician insisted that the Valeo part we had was total crap and sold us a new Bosch part for €30. Looking forward to the sections on the sand tommorrow, when digger layout should be in our favour.

JG: Sounds great. I reckon if you get past the 911, the Internet will go mental (bit of mixing it up from me…)

HB: Not sure about that, will take more cunning than I have managed so far. AC will have to punish the 912 too hard, so prudence would serve us better, but I know he would be super tickled to stay in touch. Then we just see what happens over the stretch. Sorry for the lack of pics, AC never does seem to get the wifi connected. I will try to put some photos on someone elses ‘puter and get them to you.

This morning’s update:

HB: 1st stage was very boggy. Number 45 911 and the M5 made it through without stopping (except 4WD’s). We stopped, but got a tow almost immediately and got through the rest OK. 2nd stage was cancelled, 3rd was OK. AC has inflicted a few permanent dents, rocker, door, front bumper, but on the whole, car is still fine. Scoring will re-jumble again with all the FWD cars being the biggest losers. Car ran a bit hot on the long sandy stage, so we may be making some revisions if we see 40C ambient later in the event. Plenty of time airborne today, good fun!

JG: Top stuff. Have you seen much of Francis? How is he doing? How are you guys eating – is the food OK?

HB: Francis is fine, had dinner with him one night. Food-wise, we are eating nuts, berries and chocolate on the road, washed down with water all day. Beer in the bar of course. All the evening meal food has been great: right now we are in a euroresort on the Red Sea coast with Germans, Welsh et al. We have a meal and wash here before getting on the ferry at midnight or so. Egypt on the whole has been a repressed and damaged landscape. It will take a huge pot of gold in addition to their social revolution.

JG: And what about Kenya in a few days’ time? Have you heard the Foreign Office warnings of heightened terrorist activity?

HB: Yes, but we can do nothing but continue to be careful and vigilant. I am sure there would be a change to plans by the rally office if necessary, or ordained by home office.

by John Glynn – pics by Gerard Brown

Day 6 of the London CapeTown was always going to be tough. Here’s Hayden’s first text:

Brilliant morning. “Digger” the goat 912 clambered through the mud of the first World Cup section of the morning. Lots of cars were stuck and collected a lot of time penalties. In exchange for my early mistakes, those made by others today will close the gaps in the top 15. Rain, rain, rain all morning, not the weather we expected in Greece. Lack of heater is getting tedious, but just one more afternoon before we pick up a load of latitude on the ferry to Alexandria.

Our boys did not have it all their own way, but the Porsche 912 of Hayden Burvill and Alastair Caldwell is now up to 10th position overall and second in class. It’s about 1 hour 26 mins to the leaders when you even out the times. There’s still a long way to go and everything to play for on this event: HB and AC are not there to make up the numbers.

Solid competition going on in the Tuthill 911 cockpit too, as Joost and Jacques have moved up to 8th position overall and third in class. The 911 set FOUR fastest times on today’s six stages: a very impressive result and great validation of Tuthill air-cooled preparation. Gotta love this shot of wheel off and an empty wine bottle: Crew 45 seems to have a good balance of work and play!

Today was a battle. Snow and ice was a feature and not everyone was on the best tyres. There was also a very muddy section that bogged a few people down but the 912 kept on motoring.

Two more retirements: the French Morgan crew cracked their chassis after crashing on black ice, and the very smart Thistlethwayte 240Z went out, also due to a smash. A few people ran out of fuel, some complaints about lack of power to plough through this mud, but they’d better sort their strategies out: it’s just a taste of things to come. This is the rainy season on most of the East Coast of Africa, so count on more of the same down there.

Everyone who reads John Glynn’s Classic Porsche Blog regularly will know how bad Safari was. If it can catch someone like WaldegÃ¥rd out & almost cost them the rally and the first-ever Safari win for a Porsche 911, then what chance do mere mortals have when it all kicks off…

“Wonderful day, but we lost some time towing Alastair Caldwell out of the mud,” Francis Tuthill told the organisers. “We only just spotted him, as he was off route.” I only just spotted Fran in this pic: very back on the left. That is his navigator-seat HiLux in the background so I presume the 911 in front of it. Look at those mountains!

“I’ve been up my knees in mud,” said John Bayliss, after his Volvo went off. “The rear of the car is a little crumpled.” John was leading the 2-litre class on Day 4 and running inside the top ten, but is now down in 24th position. Shows how fast it can all change.

Hayden’s second text of the day tells how close they came to being another one of those stories:

What a day! Afternoon was going great: taking all sorts of time off our near competitors. Then in a flash, 20 metres down a wrong slot saw us over a gravel precipice. Impossible to turn around and drive out: we got rotated 90 degrees and started to work on a self-recovery. Right then, Francis showed up somehow (in his Toyota 4×4: JG), and we were able to get a tow rope and jerk the 912 back up the hill. Lost 8 minutes, but could have been much worse. Results after day 6 will be very interesting, as we have certainly made time on several cars ahead. Car is undamaged and still running hard after spending accumulated minutes on the 5800rpm limiter during stages today…

So: the boys are up to tenth. Now they have a day off on the ferry to Egypt, which is sailing into hurricane-force winds. We hope they all have a safe crossing and look forward to more news in a few days.

by John Glynn – pics by Gerard Brown

Day 4 of the 2012 London to Cape Town World Cup Rally took the competitors from Florence to Ancona for the ferry to Greece: 300 kilometres, including stages.

Day 5 brings the rally from the port of Igoumenitsa to Kamena Vourla in central Greece: a total day’s drive of just under 500 kilometres, with some stages along the way. No times out yet but I’ve just had a text from Hayden. I’m getting slightly ahead of myself, however. My previous text from the 912 was at the end of Day 2:

Had a good day, was fun and 912 has been trundling along. Have made a few mods to improve cooling, enjoyed a fun afternoon at the Bricolage making some parts on the kerbside and installing them with loaner power from the bulk goods loading bay. Great fun. AC is coming to terms with the 912 handling and I expect his fun will improve with each day.

This was sort of what happened.

Day 1 had three World Cup stages. The 912 scored a 7th, then an 11th and a 27th position. By comparison, the Tuthill 911 scored a 2nd, then a win and a 31st position! Stage 3 was clearly a navigation issue if they were both that far down.

Day 2 was a single WC stage, the 911 taking a win and the 912 coming 10th (I would write this tenth but I’m in a numbers rut now).

Day 3 times show four WC stages: 912 30th, 17th, 14th and 22nd. The organisers say this section was run through very hilly terrain which suited the bigger engined cars. So it would seem, as the 911 was well up: 15th, 10th, 5th and 2nd.

Day 4 times show one WC stage result: Piobbico. The town is 80 km west of Ancona and home to the Festival of the Ugly. I don’t know how that ties with the results, as are they are pretty attractive: 911 won the stage with the 912 coming fourth: its best result of the rally so far.

No info to hand for Day 5, apart from Hayden’s latest text:

Quite a fast pace, we are one day from getting on the Ferry to Egypt already. Car is running well, makes good pace across the stages with AC at the helm. Sorry to say most of the time lost has been avoidable navigation errors. Today was better, top 10 all went the wrong way on the last stage and gave us a bit of a time gift. Have not seen the results tonight, but have been told we are now P13. 6 World Cup stages on day 6, will be a busy day that may cause some reshuffling…..

Day 6 takes the boys and girls from Kamena Vourla to the port of Piraeus, to catch a midnight ferry. Midnight means they will be driving all day. With six stages to do at full tilt and a 490 kilometre total ahead of them, tomorrow is almost guaranteed to claim a few scalps.

The following day is a rest day, as they sail to Alexandria. Then there is no rest until they get to Nairobi in Kenya, 5,000 kilometres and ten days’ hard driving later. Can you believe they paid to do this?!

Other people we are watching: the 964 Carrera 4 was in 18th position at the end of Day 4, with Francis Tuthill in the HiLux right behind them. Hayden/Alastair and Joost/Jacques were fourth in class respectively at the end of Day 4.

Words and Pictures by John Glynn

Exciting day yesterday as, following months of preparation, the rally of the year finally got under way.

I arrived at Brooklands Museum just after noon to find Hayden and Alastair in the rally car parking, about to head to the drivers briefing. Before that there was the Yellowbrick to fit: a GPS tracker that will watch over the cars all along the route. 2,000 people turned out to meet the drivers and there’s no doubt most of them arrived just as the drivers were locked away for three hours…

Alastair reported the briefing as (long and) slightly disappointing: only one stage would be driven in the desert solely on GPS. This is an area he feels is part of the character of these rallies and where he can really make up ground on his opponents.

The going won’t be all main roads, however: Hayden was interested in a few stories of roads to come “with rocks as big as house bricks”. For sure these guys will have to keep their wits about them.

At 4PM, the rain had been falling for hours. The cars left Brooklands en route for London and the rally start at the Houses of Parliament. Former WEVO apprentice, Derek Bosman and I had headed to town at 3, so met the boys and had a bit of dinner in a local pub, but you could tell that nerves were jangling.

Once the cars started to leave and that sense of “que sera, sera” entered the cockpits, the mood was a lot more relaxed. At 7.35, Elvis left the building, followed by the Tuthill 911 10 minutes later. The 911 went on to score second fastest in both forest stages driven before the ferry that night.

I was sitting up at 2am when the phone tinged for a text message from Hayden. “Safely made it to Dover. Forest stages were a blast: AC is coming to grips with the traction and how to get it to rotate. Running well, spent a fair bit of time sideways: all good fun. Tired but ready for the ferry.”

Leading positions are all held by British cars but you know that can’t last forever. Day 2 involved a trek through France to Beaune. H’s just sent another text giving news which I will share anon.