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Camp Two – Into the Desert

Rob Howard / 14.12.2008

The third and final bus shuttling teams from the end of the paddle to the overnight camp arrived at Moreeb Dune at 21.30 – a late arrival, but not as late as had been expected. The organisers had thought the slowest teams might not be finishing the paddle until midnight, so things were running well ahead of schedule.

The camp was already well established in the now familiar grand style with a bulging mess tent and portable toilets and the early arrivals had had a little daylight to set up their tents and sort their gear after the 90 minute bus ride. Sadly there were no masseurs today – they would have been busy!

As dusk fell the second bus arrived, and the camp grew in size with gear boxes and kit scattered everywhere. A camp fire was lit and staff in full Arab dress walked around offering coffee and sweet tea on trays.

It wasn’t until gone 20.00 when some results were posted, but some of the lead teams felt they had not been adjusted for their start times on the island. The third version of the story of the start I heard was that the leaders were set off at minute intervals at 06.00 and then the rest were given a choice of start time up to 06.30. I’m sure this is the right version and team SOLE said they deliberately set off as late as possible so they had teams ahead of them to chase down and to boost their morale. They were questioning whether the times had been adjusted for this, so the positions I gave in my previous story (and possibly those on the event website) may be slightly wrong.

By 08.30 things were not running quite so smoothly in the mess tent either … there were empty dishes and any remaining food was being kept back for the last bus. The appetite of an adventure race after an 8 to 10 hour paddle had finally overcome the caterers!

When the last bus arrived more food was found for them and they faced the task of camping and preparing for the next day and a half of dune trekking. With the start at 07.00 they have a lot to do and will get less sleep than the faster racers. Ben Bardsley of Team Salomon said his team had really struggled today. “The other three are not paddlers,� he said, “not ever, so it was a tough day and a real challenge. I did see some turtles and a sting ray on the paddle, but otherwise it wasn’t so interesting.

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