This morning we were in a race to get to Nouamghar by 10.00am at the latest to catch the beach before the tide came too far in.
We should have left the campsite by 7.00am, but didn't get away until 8.20am. There's a recurring theme here! We had a brilliant high speed dash to the coast without any problems, arriving at 10.15am. Sidi decided we could still do it so set us off onto the beach, telling us not to stop, as we would then get stuck. The problem was we had to get over soft sand to get onto the beach and the Spanish team got stuck immediately. Once everyone was on the beach we set off on one of the scariest parts of the journey. The problem was that the only firm sand is that between high and low tide which has been wet. As we were late and the tide was well in this band of sand was fairly narrow. The trick we found was to run on the beach following the edge of the water. As the waves came in we ran back up the beach until the sand became too soft, then back down onto the firmer sand as the waves retreated. As there were some small dunes running up the beach we were also bouncing over these into water at the other side. We had the windows open when we hit the first one and got a thorough soaking.
We were leading at this point and all went well until we hit a particularly large wave which swamped us in water, wetting the electrics. We developed a misfire, lost power and stopped. Fortunately the others stopped and pushed us out to get us going again, as we had water lapping around our wheels. The heat of the engine dried the electrics almost immediately and we were off again. We carried on down the beach not able to see any other cars and not knowing what had happened to them. Phil and Stan who were in front eventually stopped and pulled up onto dry sand to wait for us. Kiss the Gurus, Sand in m'Crack and ourselves arrived wand pulled up alongsde them. Sidi now considered it too dangerous to continue so we had to sit it out on the beach until the tide went out again about 6pm. The problem we faced was that we had lost Team Jamu Wachu and Alba Adventures. When they didn't turn up Sidi walked back up the beach to find them. We whiled away about 6 hours before we suddenly saw both cars coming down the beach. Seemingly, Sidi had walked 12km back along the beach before he found them. The Spanish car had been having the same problem as us, in that every time it got wet it stopped. Having the sensible ones, John and Andy with them, in the Pajero, they had got the car onto dry sand and also decided to wait for the tide to go out.
With the teams back together again we set off down the sand with the instruction to stop for nothing until we reached a fishing village where we were to pull off the beach and camp. We reached this village without problem, just as it was getting dusk, and eventually found our way off the beach. Again we had the problem that there were no Spaniards or Alba Adventures. After half an hour the Spaniards arrived being driven by Sidi, as they had once again had loss of power through water on the electrics. This only left the Pajero of John and Andy. When they didn't come we asked a jeep which was heading up the coast to take some of us back to help. This he did while the rest of us set up camp. An hour later they arrived, being towed by this truck, who charged them the extortionate sum of €150. Their clutch had finally gone and the car just would not travel under it's own steam. We were finally all back together after the most eventful day so far. 132km today and 5,977km in total.
