The story.....2010 rhinocharge at Londuroj

Written by Louise Leakey | 03 June 2010

We drove down on the morning of the 29th May to the southern tip of Lake Magadi. Here we were given directions to take us to the competitors camp site. We had a conveniently located camp set up near some trees close to the main head quarters. See Camp on the Map. We were able to spend some of the afternoon sorting out our little red car and the children had a great time playing in the plunge pool because its a hot dry part of Kenya. We were sharing camp with Team 42 which is made up of several of Car 17’s spouses - Mikey, William, and Neil. They did incredibly well in the charge this year, placing 3rd and doing most of it with 2-wheel drive. We were a total of 18 in our camp including eight children and support staff and nannies! Quite an operation to get us all out there for this competition. Of our girls team Tanya Markham had her 1 year old Jamie there, Julie Church had her 1 year old Otto with her, Gemma had 1 year old Marina with her, Tanya Carr Hartley had Sala (6) and twins Kinna and Tisa with her and Louise had Seiyia (5) and Alexia (3) with me. Helle is in charge of them all! They were all very engaged with the car quite often in not so helpful ways.

On the second morning we head to the headquarters to hand in our sponsorship, deposit raffle tickets and to draw our starting check point for the charge. Tanya pulled BROOKHOUSE out of the envelope which we were pleased about as Team 42 also had this as their starting checkpoint so we knew they would be not too far from us the whole way round the course next day. The Car is given a final check.  We filled in raffle tickets for all your donations.

This evening we collected the GPS fixes and the map to plot our course for the following day. Its a very critical evening for us all. We measure shortest distances and work out various options that we think our car can manage as well as points where we will make a decision about which way to go while we are out there. We had it all worked out by 10pm that night working by the light from our little generator with lots of bugs flying all around us. With Google Earth on the laptop it helped to visualise the map in front of us but you really have to map read to get it right- there is no replacement.

After a stressful evening realising that our brake master cylinder was leaking at the seal we had to find a new one and fit it before the morning. A similar car drove 4 hours to meet us at Loduroj so we could use the master cylinder from this vehicle in the event next morning. These repairs were completed at 1am that morning! We had an early start and set of at 0545am to meet the convoy for an escort to our starting point at Brookhouse on the far northern part of the map. We were on our way to TMAM, our first checkpoint at 730. To get there we had to cross a very steep sided dry river valley, and did some rock moving with a crowbar before we found our way up to the top and into the checkpoint. Out of TMAM we had to get back up this river bank the other way and decided to get in there ahead of Car 42 incase we needed a little push! Thank you car 42, it was the confidence we needed at this point. We had a good early run at the Gauntlet which you need to complete three checkpoints in the absolute minimum distance possible as your distance in this section is multiplied by 3. Checkpoints KWS, Goodyear and Braeburn were the gauntlet points. We did this well but were too preoccupied to get our red wigs and red dresses on this year. Next year we promise! From Copy Cat we skirted the edge of the ridge line and made our way slowly over some very tough country. Lots of wait a bits and loose rocks. We did a fair bit of pushing and some very determined driving from Tanya got us up some impossibly difficult hillsides.

From Hardy we had a good run on a cattle track we found down part of the way to Procraft and in there to find that our next section that we had hoped to run, a direct 1.1km beat through a narrow river vally to Vineyard was not passable because of a seven car pile up between the two points in a narrow section there. So we decided not to sit it out and get in the mess there but to back track to our point 2 and take a different route on the other side of the ridge to Vineyard. This cost us 3 kilometers which would have had us placed in ninth position had we done the shorter leg!  Fortunatley we came across a cattle track that made this section a little easier. It was quite hot in the day by the time we got to Vineyard and here we made a run for Satau, picking up the cattle track the other side of Vineyard again. Satau to AON was not a problem, but a long run and to cut across from here to Greensteds over the hills would have needed more time than we had so we cut and ran around the hills here and probably could have cut over a ridge in one more place with the extra hour that we had. By this time we could smell home again and decided to play it safe and finish the charge.  So we made it back in to Brookhouse with lots of cheering and jubilation and only twenty minutes or so before car 42 who managed to cut 10.17 kilometers off our total distance of 47.5 km by running the tiger line between Copy Cat and Hardy as well as making it through the Procraft to Vineyard section. They were placed 3rd (total 37.36 km). We got the Coupe des Dames, winning the womens event with 6 entrants and were placed 18th overall, out of the 60 cars that started. Only 33 cars finished the event. We came 3rd in the unmodified vehicle class!

So the final results were posted the following morning at prize giving. Team 38 won the event in 36.32 kilometers just 11.2 kilometers ahead of our total distance.    
This year Ksh 72,540,232 shillings were raised for the Aberdares which is a new record. This will go to the maintenance of the fence and the projects within the ecosystem. This is what this event is all about. We MUST protect this area and maintain the fence that we have all worked so hard to build over the past decade.

Car 17 raised a total of 2,040,539 shillings and we wish to thank all of you who so generously contributed to this. We are very grateful.

We are already raising money again for next years event - please consider supporting us again here right away. Please send us your ideas and suggestions and spread the word to your friends for us. Next year we will have a better live feed for you to follow us. We were learning this time round, but we had a fun day for an exceptional cause.