The next event was the Swan Rally run by Windsor Car Club with PRAR as clerk. I have a theory that you should never let an expert navigator run an event – they’re too clever for their own good. What they don’t see is that what they find far too simple to get any sort of result is still a nightmare for most crews. PRAR had taken this on board to some extent by opting for what is known as a tulip roadbook. With this all the navigation is by tulips and it’s all in one book which is handed out at the start, the problem being that you don’t know where in the book the navigation for any one
particular
section starts and this is given to you by the marshal at the start of
each section. This type of navigation has been used successfully on the
Alnite Rally for several years but I’m afraid it didn’t work so well here.
I think the problem was that many competitors weren’t at all familiar with it and it seemed terribly confusing, I know that Graham Child and Kevin Ablitt, who are by no means novices had problems in the first half but were in the swing of it for the rest of the event. Andy Coshan and I were helping with results and we spent a lot of time at the start helping the novices understand the principle. The novices had the benefit of being given the first half as a printed map with the route marked on in full and the clubman event had the entire route this way, which meant that they enjoyed the night.