Wannabe Dakar riders and the Kaitorete Spit

[cooneyr]

Ever want to pretend you are riding through the sand of North Africa on the way to Dakar but cant leave the South Island. Now’s your "chance". El and I are off to ride the Kaitorete Spit on Sunday (1st Feb) on the Super Tenere's. Be at the garage in Tai Tapu for a 9am departure.

Ride will be dependent on the wind. Basically is sucks to ride into the wind with the sand and sea spray covering you. Much better to ride with the wind. There is a gravel road for about 1/2 the spit which we will use to travel into the wind or will bail too if we can't handle the jandel. Final right of passage will be crossing from Birdlings Flat across the small stones that form the mouth of Lake Forsyth onto Banks Peninsular. The small stones are much harder to ride than the sand. For those that have experienced and conquered the "stones" the beach is reasonably easy in comparison but still interesting cause the bike tends to follow other vehicle tracks.

Couple of rules -

• Absolutely NO riding on any vegetation
• Absolutely NO disturbing any bird nesting areas

Would probably be best to make sure your chain is dry for the run so there is minimal sand sticking to the chain. Also a very very good idea to bring a pump to pump up tyres as dropping tyre pressures makes a huge difference.

Cheers R

[NordieBoy]

Ever want to pretend you are riding through the sand of South America on the way to Dakar but cant leave the South Island. Now’s your "chance". El and I are off to ride the Kaitorete Spit on Sunday (1st Feb) on the Super Tenere's. Be at the garage in Tai Tapu for a 9am departure.

Fixeded....

[cooneyr]

Fixeded....

Yer but the XTZ's never went to South America so we have to pretend we are in a very wet bit of north africa - sheesh

Cheers R

[Peril]

Shame you aren't doing this next weekend.My electric start will be working (yes,finally Ryan!) and my (3rd) non cracked clutch casing will be fitted.

[cooneyr]

Shame you aren't doing this next weekend.My electric start will be working (yes,finally Ryan!) and my (3rd) non cracked clutch casing will be fitted.

Yay, finally an elec start!!! Bugger trying to bump start it on sand LOL. I'm sure we can go back another time if all goes well. El and I can be the scouts

Cheers R

[cooneyr]

Well that was fun. Magaged to get about 300mm or so of air I'm told of small dunes that are perpendicular to the water line. Not bad for a 220kg porker (the bike that is)!

Had a few teathing troubles in that the north end of the beach is mainly gravel so if you loose too much speed or stop it is hard to get going again. El Scooto got stuck and required pushing, I went to help not realising what had happened and also needed pushing. El's XTZ then spat its chain but after a bit of spannering and coaching we were underway again.

Other vehicle's ruts in the sand/stones made life interesting for a bit untill we tried sitting right to the back of the seat or hanging right back when standing up. You more guide the bikes than steer them on this sort of stuff. Want to turn left, lean left and leave the bars relatively square. Turning the bars just ends up in the front wheel pushing lots of sand and if you button off cause if feels stange you low side or need a strong leg to hold the bike up.

Travelled the 25ish kms to the mouth of Lake Ellismere (Te Waihora) to find that we could probably have ridden across the mouth (cut wasn't opened) so we probably have carried on further down the beac to the Rakia River or we could have looped around the Lake.

On the way back north we had a bit of a play (the afore mentioned jumps) and TA and I got some video. I'll try and post it tonight along with the pics. Also tried a few sand drags from about 40kph in second. Tenzing with his reasonably new E09 on the back too the prize but it was reasonably close. Drags were between an F650 Dakar and two XTZ750's (the CRF230 was a little short geared). Would be interesting to try again but from a standing start. That would sort out your staring technique on the sand. Starting mioving definatly improved over the ride.

Got back to the north end of the beach to some pretty toasty bikes. The F650 Dakar had its over hot light on for the last 15 or so minutes and the XTZ750's were warm but OK. The torque and reasonably high rev range of the XTZ750's made them pretty easy to ride on the sand. Can see that they would have made a good Dakar bike of their time but loosing weight would have been a major plus.

Definatly going back for another run some time.

Cheers R

P.S. It appears that clay has been placed forming a track over the mouth of Lake Forsyth so if you ever wanted to do the Bossu Road from one end to the next now is a good time to do it.

[cooneyr]

The video finally uploaded last night. Pretty crappy, taken with a digi cam but you get the idea. Hopefully TA will upload some of his video shortly



Cheers R

[NordieBoy]

The video finally uploaded last night. Pretty crappy, taken with a digi cam but you get the idea. Hopefully TA will upload some of his video shortly

The scale Dakar with the scale Dunes.

[cooneyr]

The scale Dakar with the scale Dunes.

Would have been fun to have ago at some of the dunes but big no no on this beach. Might have to take a trip to Foxton or some other place up north next

Cheers R

[Transalper]

Geeze everything looks and sounds so out of proportion (except the non existent dunes) from the way I remember seeing and hearing it all in person.

[Transalper]

Here we go, taken on my old sony cybershot...
And attached is a still frame of Matts Dakar just clearing the surface instead of cutting a track well into the sand.

[Underground]

Good stuff , those S 10's sound cool , twins rock

[cooneyr]

Good stuff , those S 10's sound cool , twins rock

Especially when you take the baffle out of the Arrow can that is on El's bike. Sounds bloody awesome but you cant talk to each other with the bike running.

The twins just mowed through the sand. Heaps of torque at low revs so getting moving was generally not to hard (the paddling is cause we stopped in silly places) and plenty of snot to pull 100++ on the beach. The riders sense of self preservation was all that kept the speeds down

Cheers R

[Balrog]

I see your XTZ's dig furrows almost as good as my GS

That looked like heaps of fun, did you guys drop your tyre presures down very much?

[cooneyr]

I see your XTZ's dig furrows almost as good as my GS

That looked like heaps of fun, did you guys drop your tyre presures down very much?

We didn't drop tyre pressures for a start off but did later on after a fairly long pushing session in the loose stones at the north end of the beach. I'm not that going from 30 to 20 really made enough difference to qualify as "dropping the pressures" though. Not that keen on trying 15 or so on the XTZ's.

Cheers R