Syd Stelvio – Sahara Challenge - Day 10 – Marrakech to Essaouira – 397km
On September 8th, 2023, an earthquake of a magnitude of 6.8 struck in Western Morocco, near the town of Oukaimedene. 2,900 people were killed, and half a million are estimated to have been displaced. Most of us would have seen this on the news, and to us that is exactly what it was, pictures and statistics on a screen. Our route today took us up into the mountains south of Marrakech, where just over a year ago this terrible natural disaster occurred, and we could see first-hand the ongoing impact on the communities affected by the quake.
There were places where buildings once stood, piles of rubble and boulders that had fallen from the surrounding mountains that were at times the size of a small house. You could see cracks in buildings and places where landslips had occurred. Most of all though, we passed through the displaced communities, packed into shelters on the side of the road, some close to the makeshift aid centres that have been set up, and some not so. It was sobering stuff, and the statistics from the news stories could now be transposed into the faces of those whose lives have been changed forever.
It puts what we are doing into context, the problems we have faced and the difficulties that are experienced on an endurance rally such as this. At the end of the day, no matter who or where we are, as humans on this planet I guess we are all just looking for the same thing really, safety and security, a place to stand. In many ways it makes this sort of rally seem a bit futile.
The show goes on though, the world keeps turning and today the rally kept on moving. Five regularities in total, on a 397km route that took us through some more desert and then on that route over the mountains, which, in spite of everything was still beautiful in places, though it feels crass to say so.
The regularities themselves mainly had their difficulty governed by the elevation changes within them, with a lot of climbing, particularly on the second of the day. The first, across the sands of a leisure area near to Marrakech, finished with a touch of navigational malice, and even our erstwhile and reliable leaders in car 6 gained a chunk of time. Regularity number five too, that picked a path through the forests and dirt roads that crept along the Atlantic Coast offered up a few tests that would catch out any unwary navigators. The last of these, a triangle to a timing point off of the main track in the middle of the regularity, caught out plenty, with a good number of cars sailing on by and needing to back pedal to achieve a correct approach. A couple of cars missed it entirely, and gained two minutes a piece for their troubles, although it would be cruel to list them here.
There had been some mechanical woes for people as well, with second placed car 7 suffering a stuck throttle, that thankfully occurred just after a reg had finished, and third place classic machine, the Porsche 944 of Jos Dejongh and Patrick Debussere requiring a tow into base after the engine inexplicably wouldn’t fire. Jorge Perez and Jose Volta also have reliability worries, with brake issues that they have found a fix for during the rest day but will certainly be having nightmares about over the next few days until they are safely at the finish.
They are still leading though, and the margin now to Sutton and Lawson in second is now almost as much as five minutes. They were not best on the day though, that accolade belongs to Michael Rodel and Andrew Duerden in the number 32 Mercedes, with just over a minute of penalty on the day.
The rally has now reached the coast, and tomorrow will begin the journey back north. After seeming like there was so much ahead of us, there are now only two and a half days left. Time is never time enough.
Syd
