ITERA Ireland
Relentless Forward Progress
Rob Howard / 20.08.2016
It’s the morning of another day at ITERA, but if you asked the teams which one and what day of the week it is you’d get a lot of different answers. Not that it matters. Relentless forward progress into the teeth of the gale and the incessant rain are all that matters.
As the teams continue southwards more teams have moved from short course to non-competitive but remarkably there are still 10 teams on the full course, battling forward. At the front of the race FMR are still racing away. Their lead may not look so great, but they have stopped to sleep after their climb of Mount Brandon in some epic overnight conditions. The strong winds got stronger, much stronger and the rain was so intense it was hard to see through it at times.
Towards the back of the race the rising winds caught the later teams on the last part of the Lough Corrib paddle yesterday evening and several had to be pulled in by the race staff. The Japanese boats got separated and some of the boats had to be recovered after the racers had been brought in.
The overnight dark zone imposed by the last Shannon Ferry caused some excitement for team Jolly Adventurers. They been riding hard into the wind, desperate to make the last ferry and were cutting it too close so Steve Hamblett rode ahead and was negotiating with the ferryman to wait a little. He generously did so, but after 5 minutes a little more negotiation was needed. In another 5 minutes the engines were on and Steve was determinedly staying on the ramp and waiting for his team ...
At last they rode down the hill to collapse onto the deck and the ferry was away. When they’d got their breath back it was time for a group hug and once on the far side they checked into a hostel for a few hours sleep and to get out of the weather. For Mandy Greenaway the effort was as much as she could give so she stayed in bed when they set off again, heading for the orienteering.
It was definitely a night for taking shelter and others too found their way to hostels and B&B’s. Strong Machine ended up in a hotel and we’ve not heard if they left again yet, and the Lakes Crusaders stopped to ask about a B&B and were invited into a local farmhouse to spend the night.
That’s typical of the generosity of the welcome here. At the coasteering this morning a local workman checked with me that he’d replaced a race sign blown away by the wind in the right place. He’d found a stone block to hold it down. (His Kerry accent was so strong I couldn’t understand a word he said, but we got through on sign language!) At the same time other locals were offering a farm building to move the transition into as the tents had to be taken down. It was incredible they survived the night, though were not quite in the same place at the end of the night as at the start!
Unfortunately the coasteering was another casualty of the wind this morning. It was open well into the night in some conditions which truly qualified it as an Open Adventure ‘trouser filler’, but in the early morning the wind direction changed, driving the deafening surf up onto the course and the safety call had to be made to call it off. (The first team to arrive and not complete it were Godzone Adventure Mountain Hardwear at around 10.00am this morning and the teams who are not able to do it will be given a time adjustment equivalent to the slowest time on the section.)
Jolly Adventurers arrived soon after and had mixed feelings about not coasteering. “You’d like to do it all,” said Susan Lawrence, “but on the other hand I am bit relieved not to have to jump into the Atlantic! I’ve been psyching myself up to do it all morning.”
With the time adjustments the tracking and leaderboard won’t now be a true reflection of the positions but luckily it’s not affected the leading teams as move onto the final sections of the course.
SleepMonsters
