Seven & a half crews turned out for Andy & Vivien Elcomb’s
scatter rally, which started from the Park Gate Inn on the A20, near Leeds
Castle.
The “half a crew” was Chin on his own, and there were single
crews from Maidstone, Borough 18 and Historic Rally Car Register. The balance
was made up of 7Oaks crews, top seeds Mark Dawson & Daren
Hall, then Mick Sullivan & Trevor Rogers,
Mick Rose & Gill Twemlow and last, but not least, Ross
Savile & Ian Crocker.
This was Ross’s first experience of a scatter, but the hardest part
was obviously finding the start, as he had to phone for directions – but
he made it in time in his MR2.
36 plots defined by map references and some simple coded stuff were
very quickly converted to points on the map, which showed that this was
going to be a high scoring event as it covered a relatively compact area.
The weather was ideal for this sort of thing, dry for good grip but fairly
cold to keep the locals away tucked up indoors!
The theme was 007, with stickers showing the names of various Bond
movie characters to be found for most of the clues. To make it easier,
once in the area, the locations were also given, i.e. “back of Give Way
sign”. This had the added benefit of allowing clues quite near houses at
times, but with no annoying wandering about or torches waving around.
The rules of scatters say no defined route and if you get 75% of the
plots correct that is a maximum score. So in anticipation of a few clean
sheets, the tie-break asked for as many Bond film names as possible, then
for any more clues over the 27 maximum (75% of 36). There were 10 points
available for each correct answer, but 5 points penalty for every minute
late back.
This became critical at the finish as no less than four crews cleaned
the event, bringing the tie-breaks into play.
Just on sheer numbers of correct plots, Mark & Daren morally won
the event by a huge margin – getting 35 of the 36 plots right, missing
the final one because Mark forgot to plot it! Next up were Dennis Usmar
& Tom Solomon from Maidstone with 28, Maria & Roger McKenzie from
B18 also with 28, Ross & Ian with 27, Mick & Trevor with 22, David
Gill & Dean Marley from HRCR with 17, Chin on 17 and MicK & Gill
with 12.
BUT.....when you start to factor in the tie-breaks, a different picture
emerges. It turns out that Ross & Ian played the game very technically,
getting the required 27 and then spending a fair amount of time ensuring
they got lots of tie-breakers. Not too difficult when Ross admitted to
being a bit of a Bond anorak! No less than 21 films listed gave them the
win, but there was more bad news for Mark & Daren – Dennis & Tom
also knew their films, their 15 tie-breakers eclipsing Mark & Daren’s
11 and pushing them down to 3rd place!
David & Dean and Chin both incurred some penalties for coming back
two minutes late – both blaming a very slow Porsche in the lanes for their
delay. They both dropped to 160, with Chin dropping the place as he didn’t
manage any tie-breaks (if only the tie-breaks could have been medieval
dance steps instead!.....).
Mick & Gill brought up last place, although they were back ten
minutes early but enjoyed the run and as a novice, Gill learned a lot from
the event.
So congratulations to Ross & Ian, commiserations to Mark &
Daren and well done to the rest, hopefully without too many scraped sumps
from the very bumpy lanes.
Next 7Oaks scatter is Ian Crocker’s on 8th January, starting from The
Chaser, Shipbourne but that will probably have happened by the time this
report reaches Acorn – if that is the case, then earmark 12th Feb for our
next scatter, although there are Maidstone events on 16th Jan and 13th
Feb to play on too. Contact Andy Elcomb or Mark Dawson for info.
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| 1st | Ross Savile | Ian Crocker | MR2 | 7Oaks | 270 +21 tie break |
| 2nd | Dennis Usmar | Tom Solomon | Mini | MMKMC | 280 +15 |
| 3rd | Mark Dawson | Darren Hall | Puma | 7Oaks | 350 +11 |
| 4th | Maria Mckenzie | Roger McKenzie | Escort | B18 | 280 + 6 |
| 5th | Mick Sullivan | Trevor Rogers | Clio | 7Oaks | 220 +18 |
Andy Elcomb