Apologies to my avid readers.  Both of them.  🙂
This year has been quite mental.
However, the rally plans are in full swing and scarily, the entry form has been sent off.

So with 36 days remaining (I really wish I hadn’t calculated that) preparations are ramping up.
Currently studying for our rally licences which we are aiming to sit next week.  A fairly critical piece of the puzzle.
The final gravel sprint event in our build up was last weekend with some fun being had up near Shannon. 4.5km up Mangahao Dam Rd.  Confirmed that the car works better than the driver.
Last event in the build up is a tarmac sprint at Port Rd this weekend. Then a month off to give the car a good check over, do a round of maintenance and double check it’s all good to go.

Since my last post at the start of March we’ve done 18 more events.  Explains the busy year.

Next major task is figuring out the logistics for the rally.  Hoping to team up with another crew and share facilities and resources if we can.  That will help reduce the overall costs a little.
Either way, still need to find some willing volunteers to be our service crew.  A very necessary part of the team.  Hopefully all they will have to do is wash the windscreen, put fuel in the tank and maybe change tyres once or twice.  I guess we can only wait and see on that point.  Not much in the way of spares so if we break something critical, then we are probably going to be sidelined anyway.  The joys of rallying on a very tight budget.

Hopefully I’ll actually be able to update this a bit more frequently and maybe even do some blogging from the event itself.

It’ll be a long and busy week.
We will head up to Tauranga on the Wednesday for Doco on Wednesday evening.
Thursday will see us commuting over to Raglan for reconnaissance or the day one stages where we get to go over them twice at road speed to check the supplied stage notes are correct.
Friday we will do the same but in the Tauranga-Rotorua area for the day 2 stages.
Friday evening is the ceremonial start.
Saturday morning there is another commute over to Raglan for the first actual day of the rally and 6 stages totalling 145km of competitive distance.
Sunday sees a further 6 stages with 80km of competitive distance.
Along with the touring sections between stages, there is around 1000km of driving in those two days alone.  Not to mention getting to and from Tauranga in the first place, and the recce kms.  Better make sure the RUCS are up to date on the Ranger.

That’s all for this update.  Got some preparing to do.