Back in the old routine

For three days we were doing arguably what we do best – being part of the sweep team. Day 2 saw us attending to the dehydrated Mr Gadasin and then (sort-of) escorting him out, and then towing out one of the GoKobra team on his quad. In between, we were entertained by Streaky getting the ‘Queen Mary’ (a.k.a. Sk Hamad’s massive F350 pick-up) repeatedly stuck trying to escape from a deep bowl.

By the start of Day 3, we'd acquired a VHF radio, a FRS handset, a set of stickers and a sweep team T-shirt - so it was official. We swept from the start near Tharwaniya as far as Moreeb, before being pulled out to sweep from the restart (Hameem) onwards. The last car out was Emil Kneisser’s, which had lost 4WD and promptly got stuck in a bowl. After his support crew had finally extricated him, he set off in an ultimately futile bid to complete the stage, before pulling out at the pipeline crossing. Having cooked his engine, I towed him out to the road.

Day 4 started off the MZ road, and the first customer was our friend Jurgen in the GoKobra 243. He’d managed to achieve an impressive 720 degree roll, ending up on his wheels, the only damage being a loose mudguard! Soon we were helping Tommy Castellazzi to refill the radiator of his diesel Landie, which had blown a top hose. To his credit, he made it across to the Ghayathi road before calling it a day. I then got stuck on a piece of innocuous looking flat sand, and whilst reversing onto the sand-ladders ripped off the back box of my exhaust. After that it was just a matter of fighting our way across the soft dunes to the road, arriving just in time to stop the fuel bowser from leaving PC2. We fueled up and headed for PC4 at Arada, and after the last car went through we started our final sweep. About 2km into it, Nigel managed to drop his Patrol into The Bowl from Hell and lose a tyre.

We couldn’t even get to the axle to jack it up, so we tried to double-winch it out. My winch overheated, then his winch popped a fuse and left his electrics dead. Bugger. After a bit of re-wiring he managed to get the engine going, so we used the sand ladders to reverse it a bit, to try and get a jack under it. But a sand ladder had ended up buried precisely where we needed to put the jacking board. Bugger. Finally dug the sand ladder out, and jacked it up. However, the car was still at a lousy angle and fell off the jack. Bugger. Put in another jack, try again – not great but this time we managed to get the spare wheel under the chassis for insurance. Dug under the tyre, reseated it on the bead, connected up the compressor – and then found that the valve had ripped off. Bugger. Find spare valve, push it in from the inside, pull it through – and the car falls off the jack again. Bugger, bugger, bugger. Jack it up again, finally get some air in it, and it pops back onto the bead. Hurrah. More sand-ladder activity and eventually he’s reversing back up the slope. After three attempts he makes it out, by which time we’d spent 4 hours there and it was dark, and control had ordered a helicopter ‘virtual sweep’ to save us having to continue.
It’s a long, long drive round the crescent from Arada to Hameem, where much-needed beer and dinner awaited us.