Southern Traverse
Outward Bound Bounds to Third
Susan McKenzie / 18.11.2004
Outward Bound, as its name might suggest, includes three Outward Bound instructors (Ang Dryland, Keith Riley and Dave van Beek) and Chaplow, who is a programme manager. At 38, he is the team captain and the oldest member of the team.
“At the end of the first day, we came into a checkpoint and asked who was ahead of us. We couldn’t believe it when they said there was only one team. It was so unreal.�
Still, that was early days for the team, which bounced around the top five for most of the race.
“On that last trek, we thought we’d blown it,� Chaplow says. “We saw three sets of headlamps up ahead of us, going a different route and we thought we were stuffed, that we had taken the wrong route. But then we lost them. When we came out at TA7 in third place this morning we realised we hadn’t made a mistake at all.�
Chaplow says the team never let its ranking determine its race strategy.
“We’re all navigators, so we all navigated this course, which really helped,� he says. “We’re not good cyclists, though, but we set up a good towing system to tow Ang on the bikes and that worked really well. We also ate when we needed to and we slept when we had to.�
Over the last twenty-four hours, the team slept a lot. “We took lots of 15-minute sleep breaks,� he says. “Even during that last paddle, just now. After a while we were so tired, we had to stop and pull over and sleep for five minutes. The sleepmonsters really got me today, I have to say. We just couldn’t stay awake.�
Teams continue to cross the finish line of this year’s Southern Traverse. The next team is expected in within the next few hours, and teams will continue to file along the beach from now until the cut-off tomorrow afternoon. There are two courses: the classic course was won by Kathmandu (see previous story) and the so-called adventure course, a shortened version of the classic course. It was won by Team Jamo Bus, a Kiwi team from Taranaki and Wellington.
SleepMonsters
