TeamD Adventures

Mountains To The Sea (MTTS) is a long running touring rally, offered by the Cascade Sports Car Club in Portland. It is the middle offering in the ‘Triple Threat Weekend’, a multiple-event contest with a Friday night trap rally, MTTS on Saturday, and a rallycross on Sunday.

Saturday we were up bright and early. MTTS starts in South Portland, and heads out to the Pacific Ocean. We we ran it two years ago as novices, and won our class. MTTS 2006 was our first day-long rally, and played a large part in getting us interested in TSDs. This year, we ran in the Unlimited class - our first time with the box in this club. Although we’ve benefited from some great mentoring, and some good luck with the box on other rallies, we pretty much dorked this rally right from the start.

Cascades rallies generally use stop control style checkpoints, rather than passage controls. But this year, MTTS followed a more SCCA-style of touring rally, using passage controls and CZTs. The supplemental instructions outlined the procedure. It seemed pretty straightforward. Heh.

There were also these two notes:

Note: 3-2-1 GO - Rotate the CAST as you see “SCHOOL BUS STOP AHEAD”.

CSU 3

CSD 2

CSU 1

The rotation does not restart with a new leg.

Note: Back to School - Rotate the CAST as you see “SCHOOL BUS STOP AHEAD”.

CSU 3

CSD 2

CSU 1

The signs in the transit are included in the count. The rotation does not restart with a new leg. The signs encountered during the transits are applied to the first CAST in the next TSD leg.

Say what? A number of navigators’ brows furrowed at the notes. There wouldn’t be any pre-calculating, because the sign locations and counts aren’t known in advance. The 3-2-1 note was introduced at the start of the 1^st section, and cancelled at the end of the morning TSD, so it was effective all morning. The 2^nd note was introduced at the start of the 1^st afternoon TSD, and never cancelled.  It meant we were on a sign hunt pretty much the whole rally.

New tires on the car for this rally — so at the start of MTTS, our factor was WAY off. We hit the end of the tire warm-up, and confused the pre-marker sign for the sign marking the end of the warm-up. We went past the real sign in a one-way section of the Gee Creek Rest Stop. Ooops! We waited for cars to pass, and snuck back to begin the ODO calibration section in the right spot.

We headed to the first TSD, in La Center, keeping a sharp eye out for signs! The La Center TSD was short, with 2 CZTs. We saw 2 signs, so following the Note we CAST +3 then -2. The count of signs does not reset — so at the beginning of the next TSD, Green Mountain, we should do a +1 on the CAST if we see a sign. We saw 3 signs in TSD 2, with 2 CZTs. We already had a time dec and a missed turn under our belts…

Hmmm, something funny with instruction 59, ‘RIGHT AT STOP PAUSE .25 CAST 37 –CZT 11:48.66’

Where do you apply the PAUSE, given that you have a CZT?  It doesn’t make sense to add it before the CZT. Looked at the rules. Wasn’t clear what to do… the CZTs before had a built in pause, so why would it be there? Hmm.

There was a little pull out just after the turn, and we conferred, then agreed to add the PAUSE, after leaving the STOP at the CZT time. Next up is the transit to lunch, where we turned in our time allowances (yes, we picked up some more), and read the official time sheet.

OOHHHHHHH NOOOOOOO!!!!!! There were 4 signs in TSD 1 and 4 in TSD 2. Unfortunately, we missed the very 1^st sign. The result is that every CAST-at-sign after that was wrong. Because the CAST rolling doesn’t reset at TSD 2, we took those penalty points at each subsequent checkpoint. It doesn’t matter that we ‘reset’ at the CZT, we didn’t have the right CAST to start it. To complete the package, the .25 PAUSE was supposed to be added BEFORE the CZT (whatever that means).

We were so disheartened, we talked about retiring then; but there is a barbeque at the end, and we’d get to see some friends. So we continued. Continued to mess up, that is: We missed another sign in the 3^rd TSD, I confused 2 CZTs back to back and we blew right through the second one. It was so hopeless that we traded seats. My former driver, now navvie’ing, blew us through a CZT just like I did. We missed more signs. The penalties got worse and worse, because the sign count now incremented across the transit sections too. The CZT times weren’t adding up, but we were so rattled we didn’t notice.

The coup de grace was when we heard from other teams that  time allowances should be carried through the entire ½ day. We didn’t do that - we got back on our minute when we started a new leg. We took some points for that, then, in the morning. If we turned in our TAs for the afternoon, we’d take points in the last 2 TSDs, if we don’t turn them in we take points in the first 3. We toss the TA sheet. We’re sunk.

The barbeque was north of Astoria on the Columbia River. The weather was warm and sunny unlike last year’s rally where it was rainy and cold.

In the end, sections 3, 12 were thrown. Times were adjusted for 5, 6, 11. The scorers were very gracious and adding our time declarations as if we’d reset between TSDs. They even took our tossed TA. The.25 pause penalty was dropped for the affected cars. Still, we finished last (6^th) in the UNLIMITED class and behind all the Masters class in 9^th place overall with a score of 244.

Perpetual winners Russ and Katy Kraushaar won with a score of 9. The Sorems won Masters with a score of 111. SOP won by MacDugall and Steve Smith with a score of 293. Novices Clawson and Hallquist won their class with 304.

We’ll make great Friday night rallymasters. We can make a trap out of anything!