NEW/FEWBIE-INTER-ADVANCE DRIVE,FRIDAY OCTOBER 9th ,2015

12 cars already signed up an it is only Sunday…I think it will be a good line-up this weeked!! Can’t wait!!
:drive:

Can newbies like me join … this would be my 2nd drive with DubaiOffroaders

Thanks a lot Joe 🙂

Now waiting confirmation from workshop to return my car by tomorrow 🙂

Hi, my car is in for a service on Friday morning. If its back in time I will join. Is that OK?

What a greet line up sure we will have fun

Thanks for the great report for the newbie trip. Sounds like you guys had an interesting time. Hopefully everyone is OK and will be back in action shortly! :thanks:

Yesterday’s ride was a great turnout for DO. Lots of regular faces, new faces, and faces that haven’t been seen in a while. There were enough riders and marshals that we were able to have 4 convoys: newbies, fewbees, intermediates, and advance. After a quick brief by Duncan we split into our respective convoys for additional briefs.

The fewbee convoy was led by Joe and Baher was our sweep. We had a nimble convoy of 6 riders and 2 marshals. We were quickly out on our track and Joe wasted no time getting us up on the dunes. For a few of the fewbees, it was the first time riding on top of the dunes so Joe gave us a small dose of what to expect and then stopped us all to have a quick brief to ensure that everyone was comfortable with what they had just experienced. With ear-to-ear smiles we quickly cracked on. The sand was still rather soft and tricky in parts; Aditya found himself sucked into the quicksand-like dune crest. With a little turning and accelerating and careful guidance from Joe he was easily able to self-recover. I was next to succumb to the desert quicksand! On a small dune; only a few meters above the flat, I was swallowed on a side slope. A precarious position but posing no imminent danger. After a digging around the wheels and some counter-weight support on my side-step rails, Joe was able to surgically remove me from the slope with some gentle recovery tugs.

We carried on, all riders enjoying the beautiful weather, nice dunes, and comradery. Then came our first pop out. Our red Raptor descended a tight bowl-esque dune with what appeared to be too much turn in the wheel. Aside from the pop-out, the Raptor was stuck. To avoid having the smaller cars attempt to recover him, the blue Raptor was called into duty. On his way back to assist, the blue Raptor had an unfortunate mechanical failure with its CV joint blowing out. Now we had one Raptor stuck with a pop-out and one Raptor incapacitated with a blown CV joint. With Joe’s and Baher’s leadership and guidance and a lot of hands digging we were able to free the red Raptor, repair the pop-out, and get him lined up to tow-assist the blue Raptor back to the main road and safely out of the desert. I hope everything worked out in the end Yahya and Mostafa; looking forward to seeing your predatory birds back in the desert!!

The time was around 5:30 after this was all said and done so with a resounding agreement, we decided to carry on and continue our drive back into the desert. There was still plenty of sunlight and we were still eager to tackle more dunes. Joe led us up, down, and around, many large, small, stepped, and technical dunes. As we made our approach toward Sony Ericsson (does anyone know why that area is called Sony Ericsson? I was expecting to see a giant mobile phone standing in the desert) we descended into a desert forest which is always a treat. Just before night fell, we had a second popout, which we were able to quickly repair and move on. After we exited the desert we hung around for a bit of chit-chat before heading off.

It was a great ride, some new experiences for the fewbees and, like always, interesting lessons learned.
Thanks a million to Joe and Baher for a great, safe, fun-filled trip and thanks to all the riders for a great Friday afternoon!! :thanks:

Matt

What a great day in the sands after a month long break. Many new members which was a very good sight at the meeting point.

As mentioned earlier, a short briefing to all members and then the grouping was done and each group then had another briefing by their marshals.

I was in the group which was led by Duncan. It was a small group of only 5 cars – Duncan (Lead), Pbencini, Anas, Mustafa and Myself assigned as sweep.

We surely missed Duncan’s drive while he was not around.

After the briefing by Duncan we set out and there was no time wasted by Duncan as he started his favourite ‘Ridge Riding’. He conquered every ridge that come in our path and it was a roller coaster ride for 3 hours.

Short breaks were taken in between just to refresh and hit the ridges again. During one of the breaks, we were asked a question…’does anyone want to take lead for a while?’ we all just looked at each other and I guess the same thing was hitting our minds ‘After such a long time we get to drive with Duncan…. Why would we slow it down and miss on more action’ :))

Duncan….. next weekend if we are in your convoy…. im sure we all will be ready to take on that role for practice purpose as we had our full dose this week :drive:

Anas car started playing around with him close to the end of the drive…. the car was just heating up… guess he got an overdose of the drive.

We safely exited before the sunset kicked in at area 53. Anas hope all is well now and you will be back in action next weekend.

It is a pleasure to read the reports of the other groups and know that all the convoys enjoyed the weekend with the Dubai Offroaders family.

Also, it was a relief to hear that there were no injuries and everyone was safe in the rollover incident.

See you all next weekend… Have a great week and stay safe.

Tc
Duli :ymhug: