Bridgestone 4x4 Night Driving Competition - 30th August 2008 The Bridgestone 4x4 Night Competition is a new event on the 4x4 enthusiasts calender in the Western Cape. This event is the nineth competition organised by Greg van der Reis of the 4x4 Offroad Adventure Club and the first one that ended up as a real challenge as the Western Cape was hit by the worst weather in ten years. Friday evening while putting the participants packs together I checked the weather predictions and noticed that a major cold front was on it's way. Well how bad could it be? Saturday morning the rain was bucketing down and yes this was going to be interesting. I asked one of the marshals to check the river crossing. The week before it was only 400mm deep. He called me back, it was 800mm deep and rising so the crossing was cancelled and a detour planned. The vehicles started arriving early at Bridestone's HQ in Montague Gardens and soon the parking lot was home to 24 participants vehicles and 5 marshals vehicles. Spirits were high and SG Signs the sponsors of the door numbers were busy sticking numbers to vehicles when it started RAINING. The cold front was overhead and it rained for the next 24 hours. After a briefing by Greg and a numbers draw the first vehicle departed at 18h30 and made it's way to the first event. Over the years we have tried different systems of handicapping vehicles so that they all compete on a fair basis, but where does one draw the line? Long wheel base/short wheel base/diff locks/33' tyres/etc and so after eight events I decided that the best way to handicap the vehicles is to handicap the drivers and navigators and base the events around the driver team and not the vehicle. The first event entailed fixing a weight to the rear bumper and then trying to position your vehicle so that the weight is in the centre of the target. This is hard to do in the day and at night and in the rain it is very difficult. The rain was unrelenting and after watching four vehicles leaving Russell's marshal point we decided to move on. The next marshal point was outside Franschhoek and prior to our arrival the storm had blown branches off the old oak trees and whole trees were lying in the road. The wipers clearing the windscreen the headlights breaking the darkness and the mud all added to the amazing atmosphere. After traversing the eastern slope of Paarl mountain on a narrow gravel track the vehicles arrived. Morne and Andre were in high spirits everyone was buzzing. The next events were held in a shale quarry south of Villiersdorp where Eric, Andy and Peter ran the events. The shadows from the headlights and the apparant roughness of the track took it's toll as some participants thought that the track looked too rough. In reality the shale was soft and crumbled under foot and could not have damaged a vehicle. Well that is the challenge of a night event you need lights, lights and more lights. The marshals had to leap frog to get from one event to another and the timing was close to perfect. The river crossing had been cancelled due to the rising of the river water and while watching the river at the height of the storm the river was rising by almost 300mm per hour. The particpants collected their next waypoints from Russell and detoured to the Breede River. I had spoken to Peter who had a stage at the river but as the water was rising fast the event got changed again and again and the track that hugged the river had long been under water when Greg arrived to check the event. At one stage we travelled through water for four hundered meters at a time. When the first vehicle arrived the water had already risen by almost 600mm and once again Peter modified the event. After crossing the river the vehicles arrived at the final detination where the balance of the events took place. After setting up camp the participants moved off to the quarry where Hein had an event laid out. Thereafter they went to the mountain to complete a rocky hill climb and an interesting sand driving challenge marshalled by Johann. We added insult to injury as the participants competed in a special tyre repair event marshaled by Ian (from Bridgestone) and a nightmare wheel change at 3am with Morne and Andre as marshals. The event finished at 04h30 for most of the drivers and when the last marshal returned from the mountain it was 07h30 and time to check the participants enroute photo log. With the hectic rain most of the folks had slept in their vehicles instead of setting up camp and loud knocking on the misted windows woke a wet crew. Andy and Phillip entered the results and soon we had a winner. The overall winner was Mike Porter and Gary Bauer in a Landrover Discovery (they have completed all nine events since the competition started in 2002). Second was Michael Cummings and Flip Langenhoven in a Land Cruiser. Third was Peter Sherlock and Brendan Rice in a Gelandewagen (his third event) With three couples in the event we also awarded a prize to the couple with the highest score, the newcomer with the most spirit and lastly the team guts. The prize for the top couple went to Ashley and Mari Ware Lane in a Ford Manny De Pavia and George Nieuwoudt got an award for the most enthusiastic newcomer. John and Ian Williamson won the prize for guts as they had taken up a cancellation only three hours before the event started. They drove a 30 year old Jeep with a canvas top and were wet from start to finish. This is what the event is all about.