COVID19 Compliant - Afternoon Intermediate Desert Drive - Margham to Solar Park (Long Range Patrols) - Sharjah/Dubai - 27 Apr 2021

[Thomas Varghese]

[Ale Vallecchi]

Murqaab to Solar Park (and beyond): Long Range Patrols - Drive Report

"Respond to every call that excites your spirit" - Rumi

A small and experienced group of drivers met between the green Margham farms and the red sand plateau that separates this village from Nazwa. The goal of the day was to climb the bowls of this plateau, and use it as a launching pad to zoom across the technical dunes just to its west/south-west, reaching the Dubai-Al Ain Road, cross it, then entering the long range, white sand, Lisaili dunes, to exit at Solar Park.

As it often happens with small groups, the going was fast, unimpeded by stucks (a few refusals were sorted out very quickly), which allowed to cover the various stages of the drive in the bat of an eye. It took 1:30 hr to reach the tarmac at Lisaili (which for a normal FB drive, in a 12 car convoy, would take up to 3 hours), and another fast 1:30 hr to drive from Lisaili's camel-drome to the 3 Trees, near Solar Park's road. Given there was still 40 minutes left of daylight, as recommended by the poet Rumi, we did "respond to the call that exited our spirit", and extended the drive in the general direction of Bab al Shams' exit. Half an hour later (31 minutes to be precise) we recorded the first stuck, on a perfect crest, overlooking the sun setting on the horizon just beyond our exit track.

Also thanks to the short length of the convoy, we managed to experiment with shifting all drivers in all positions. We started with @GauravSoni in SL and @Shehab Alawadhi in SW, then moved Shehab to SL, to test and train his finesse driving on the technical dunes between Margham and Lisaili, and let Gaurav Soni take the sweep's place, moved on to have @Thomas Varghese in SL and @Arda Yagcioglu at sweep, and finished with Arda in SL and Thomas sweeping the convoy. I hope this gave all drivers the opportunity to share the responsibilities of the key positions of any convoy, and make hood use of this experience in the future.

In the end, the drive managed to get included in the Long Range Patrol's series of drives, with a length of 102.2 Km, covered in 3:55 hours, of which only 38 minutes not moving, for a final average speed of 26Km/h (and 30Km/h while moving).

Thanks to the members for joining, and hope to see you (and more) for the next edition of Long Range Patrols. Enjoy the weekend.

 

[GauravSoni]

@Ale Vallecchi it was a near perfect drive! Always an amazing experience driving with your lead. Well driven by @Shehab Alawadhi @Arda Yagcioglu @Thomas Varghese Looking forward to a “dusk till dawn” drive!!!