"WHEN IT ALL GOES WRONG ON THE PARIS DAKAR...IT GOES SPECTACULARLY WRONG". By Matt Dickinson, Navigator 1990

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Dick turned the ignition key and the engine roared into life with the deep, bubbling, tickover that is unique to rally prepared machines. Ahead of us a marshal in a bright orange jacket murmured our competition number into a walky talky and then waved us into line. On all sides of us were lines of similar vehicles, their drivers tense with anticipation, waiting for the minute intervals, to pass and their turn to come for the start of the days stage. This was Libya, 1990 the 12^th Paris-Dakar Rally. After a year of preparation, we were about to begin. Mechanically, we went through the routine checks. The extinguisher worked by an electronic control unit, which had to be 'armed'. I pressed, the button and the unit lit up to confirm it was still alive. In an emergency, it would release several kilograms of B.C.F. (Halon) extinguisher at high pressure into the engine bay and dashboard. Next check was the harnesses, drawn painfully tight for each of the five attachments and pinning us so tight to the bucket seats that not even the most violent roll would throw us out. Finally, we checked the intercom between our helmets and scanned the various oil and pressure gauges for unusual readings.

On my lap was a clipboard holding the route book instructions for the days stage. In front of us were 273 kilometres of, competitive stage from Sabrata to a town on the Libyan/Algerian border called Ghadames. A comparatively short day by Paris Dakar standards but not one to take for granted. I had gone through the route book with a highlighter pen and put fluorescent lines through the worst of the obstacles indicated. Amongst them were several river beds, small two or three metre 'drops', and some badly rutted tracks with big potholes.

An argument flared up briefly between two drivers competing for the same slot in the line and was sorted out by one of the army of marshals amidst much blaring of air horns and exchanges in German and Italian. Way behind us were the massed ranks of the truck teams, waiting impatiently for their time to come. Dick polished his sunglasses in an attempt to look nonchalant but he was as strung up as I was. It is impossible to be totally calm as the minutes tick away before any type of competitive event and motor sport is hard on the nerves. It was late morning now, and the sun had punched a route through some earlier haze and was warming the interior of-the cab nicely.

'How many to go?' Dick asked. I leaned out of the vehicle and counted five more vehicles in front of us. 'Five minutes'. -Without another word we put on the helmets and tightened the chin straps. As we passed a desk, the clerk of the course handed me the time card with our competition number, 324 written on the top. Next to it was our departure time from Sabrata and spaces for the rubber stamps that we would pick up at the checkpoints on the way. Whatever happens, the navigator must never lose this card, on pain of certain death at the hands of the driver. A maximum time penalty results and the team will be condemned to the back of the field with little chance of regaining their time.

At the departure point, a large crowd of local Libyans had gathered for the spectacle. As each vehicle took the starting grid they moved in tight around it. Only when the final seconds were counted and the car lurched forward did they leap backwards out of the way. One or two of them were taking photographs in front of the speeding machines and jumping aside at the last instant. 'Get ready on the horn', Dick warned and I moved my right foot over to the horn button which was mounted on the foot plate beneath me. A man with mirror glasses and a megaphone yelled at us to come forward. 'One minute' said Dick.

'The Mercedes Turbo 'G' Wagon before us revved to a screaming .pitch and then shot off down the track in a cloud of grit and dust. A shower of small stones and sand hit, our screen and we moved forward into the starting position. 'Ten Seconds', the starter said and his hand moved in front of Dick’s eyeline with fingers and thumb outstretched, ‘five.... four... three .... two..

The cockpit filled with the sound of the wildly revving engine as Dick pushed his boot to the floor. The hand flashed away from in front of us and we accelerated fast through the excited crowd with the air horn blasting away at full pitch. It was good to feel the familiar pressure in the small of my back as the Isuzu gained speed and momentum. The relief of starting was exhilarating after hours waiting at the control point. Figures flashed past in a blur of waving arms and smiling faces. The 'kamikaze' photographers popped their flash bulbs and then ran for cover. Then, suddenly, we were through the crowds and into open desert. The adrenaline rush of the start receded as we settled down into the task of concentrating on the drive. Dick squeezing every last drop of power and speed from the engine and me calling the turns and forks and compass bearings from the route book.

The route book markings were clearly defined. An old burned out tyre got a precise distance check, as did a fork in the track. But, immediately, I realised something was wrong. The distances were beginning to go wildly out. We hadn't gone for more than a kilometre but they were hundreds of metres adrift. It just didn't make sense. Then the sickening dread of realisation hit me in the pit of the stomach. 'The trip is on the wrong calibration', I yelled at Dick. In front of me was the offending article... the electronic tripometer. It measured forward distance incredibly accurately and was our only means of keeping to the route book. But there were two settings on it and it had to be on setting two. On setting one it ran at completely the wrong rate and was worse than useless. Somehow, the power supply to it must have been cut off at some point while we waited for our call time. This would effectively set it back to setting one even though I zeroed it at the start and had checked it was on two during the liaison stage down from Tripoli that morning. The landmarks were flashing past and indicated in the book was a sharp turn off to the south west. Stay calm! 'Where are we going?' Dick said into the intercom. 'What's happening?'

'We're on the wrong calibration and I'm going to change it' I replied, 'But I need a firm navigation checkpoint first’. There. it was! A tree. I noted the indicated total distance we had, covered from the start and wrote it next to the actual distance on the route book. That way I could calculate the error and be on target for the rest of the route. The area was characterised by rolling slopes and there were no other vehicles in sight as we turned to the track that headed on the right bearing. It was about 5 degrees out but we expected some deviation in our compass reading and that of the rally organisers.

'This doesn't look well used'. said Dick. He was right. the track was in pretty good condition and not chewed up. Slightly to the south of us, and running nearly parallel was another track which looked larger. Way ahead was the dust plume of another vehicle but we couldn't see which of the tracks he was on. The route book was clear of indications for a while and we watched the compass bearing carefully. It hovered five or ten degrees out of our line ... not enough to cause us to backtrack. Just as we were beginning to get seriously worried about the possibility that this was the wrong track, a Mitsubishi Pajero roared past. It was a big psychological booster to know we weren't alone.

The track was fast and Dick pushed on at a steady pace. The routebook talked about a range of dunes on the right. There were low sand hills but not as described. Our suspicions grew that this was still the wrong track. But why would it be running so close to the compass bearing? One possibility was that it was merely another route to the same place and that it would join the principal track within a short distance. That was the hope we clung to as it became increasingly obvious that we were on the wrong trail. The route book markings just didn't tally... abandoned jerrycans, withered old trees, a large rock, none of them matched the route book.

The conversation between us became more tense as the compass bearing went more adrift. We were heading too far to the west and needed to get south. Where the hell was this track going? Why was it following a route which, according to our calculations, didn't go anywhere? There was a small Oasis called Bir Alagh which was half way to Ghadames but this track would pass to the north of it. Maybe it would curl south and we would end up on the correct piste? Maybe wasn't really good enough in the circumstances. We were facing a possible time penalty or at the very least losing precious minutes on this wrong bearing.

'This track has to go south', Dick's voice was calm but I could sense the underlying tension. We rounded a bend in the route to :skirt a low hill and saw a wonderful sight in front of us. The track branched off after a fork and went pretty well due south. .'It has to be connecting with the other piste. Better still, we could see the Mitsubishi ahead on the same line. 'They must have realised what's happening'. I was relieved. We could head south for perhaps a few kilometres and hit the correct track. The fluid bowl of-the compass swung round to read 185 degrees. Perfect! With luck we could be back with the field with as little as ten or fifteen minutes lost. A mood of optimism flooded over us.

It didn't last. No sooner had the track established itself but it began to head to the east. 'The east?' groaned Dick, 'That's where we've just come from!' The Mitsubishi stopped in confusion. We were going round in a big circle and both vehicles knew it. They turned around and took a fainter, very unconvincing trail, which headed vaguely south. We followed them for a while but it soon vanished completely and we found ourselves faced with a large range of steep dunes. There was no way across. The creeping sense of desperation we had been fighting off was now chiselling away relentlessly. Stay calm!

Taking a compass back bearing, we got back to the main track. There was no sign of the other vehicle. The last time we saw them, they were on another marginal track, which looked like it was going east. They must have decided there was no way through to the south and reckoned their best chance was to head back to where they had come from. 'We have to look at the maps'. Dick said, although we both knew they were far too large a scale to be useful. I spread the best map out on the bonnet and we looked for indications of what had gone wrong. Dick pointed to a large Wadi, which was marked going south. 'If we can find that, we can follow it down. It was a fair idea but we had no way of telling which Wadi was which. Following the routes of meandering waterways was an easy way to get lost as I knew from previous experience in the desert. But, it was the only chance to avoid turning back. Even if we could find our way back, we would lose hours and possibly be out of the rally. Amazingly, we kept calm with each other. We both knew that this problem could be sorted out somehow and we would be back in the race. In those super charged minutes as we decided what to do, the tension was dying for some release. It would have been easy to end up screaming blue murder at each other but we maintained a professional attitude. If there had been any gaps in our working relationship, they would have emerged in those moments. Thankfully, we kept our heads.

We continued onwards heading as much to the south as we could until we found a large Wadi. Now, we were playing a very different. and much more dangerous, game. Following tracks in the direction you want is one thing. Forging across virgin desert is quite another. The chances of getting bogged down were high. The wadi was not the principal one marked on the map. It led us into a range of hills and then split into different fingers of eroded gullies which were obviously going nowhere. Somewhere over that rise was the main track. How to get to it?

A few vehicle tracks emerged and we followed. This is the fatal part of desert navigation. There seem to be vehicle tracks everywhere and the temptation to follow them when lost is almost impossible to resist. The reality is that they may have been there for years. Or they might have been from an oil exploration team on their way to an obscure test site ... or any number of other possibilities. But no matter how many times a vehicle trail leads, as these did, into a range of dunes, human nature always tells the follower that they must have been going somewhere .... mustn’t they? The thought that one is following the tracks of someone who is lost never occurs. I wondered about climbing up to the top of the rise to get a view of the surrounding landscape but knew it would take too long.

Dick stopped the vehicle. 'Right. We need to make a decision. Let's think about this logically.' We went through a quick analysis of our position and tried to calculate how far north of the main track we must be. Whatever the case, we reckoned it couldn't be more than five or six kilometres. So near! Dick argued-that we should try and cross the dune range on a compass bearing. I thought we might get into more trouble if we got to the other side and found, say, impassable cliffs between us and the south. But the only other option was to look for this elusive track to the south and so far that had just wasted time. After a moments thought I decided that Dick was right. We MUST head south, due south, and tackle the obstacles on the way. The way ahead looked like solid sand but this was misleading. In fact, the dunes were free standing on a gravel surface. We could weave our way between most of them and cross the ones blocking our path. We started out, following nothing but the compass bearing and were soon right in the middle of them, climbing steadily all the time.

It was good going for perhaps half a kilometre. The Isuzu had no trouble in tackling the ridges of sand. Most of them were less than two metres high and a blip of power on the throttle took us easily over them Then they started to get bigger and Dick was forced to make larger detours around them on the gravel to find a way through. We still couldn't see what was ahead. 'What do you reckon to that one?' Dick asked. It was not much bigger than the rest but it had a steeper slope. We tried it and felt the Isuzu lose traction and sink into the sand. Dick eased off the accelerator as soon as he felt it sink so that we would not have too much digging to do. A cautious attempt at a reverse failed and we peeled out of the cab at high speed for the recovery.

Only those who have ever dug a four wheel drive vehicle out of very soft sand will know quite how backbreaking it is. That delightful stuff we used to play with on the beach is another substance altogether to the quicksands of the desert. The vehicle was only up to the halfway point on the tyres but it still took ten gruelling minutes-to scrape and shovel the stuff free. Dick jumped into the drivers seat and revved up as I placed the metal sand ladders beneath the wheels. The Isuzu moved forward-up the ladders and then breasted the crest of the dune. Dick stopped it on the downward slope

Despite our eagerness to get moving we devoted a minute or so to strapping the ladders down in the back. The vibration and shuddering in the back of the vehicle makes it less than an ideal place to have ten kilograms of sharp edged metal flying about. In one of his previous Dakar runs Dick had almost had a petrol tank punctured by a stray bit of kit. The thought of 50 gallons of fuel swilling around the back was not an attractive one.

As I climbed back in and strapped on the harness I knew we were in a difficult position. If the dunes got much bigger than that last one we would be in real trouble. We were now in a no turn back position. Our strategy to head due south HAD to work or we would be out of the rally.

For some reason, the drama of our predicament had only just sunk in and it marked a change of attitude for us both. Up until then we had just been frustrated and annoyed and desperate to regain the field. Now we both knew that it was far more serious than that ... we were lost, in a drifting sea of dunes, an unknown distance from the rally route. The dunes could swallow up all our hopes in the next couple of hours. I felt my anxiety evaporate and a sense of double determination .replace it. This was becoming an adventure!

Zig zagging to the left and to the right, Dick piloted the Isuzu through the dunes. They were getting bigger, but so were the gaps between them. Often we could skirt them with only two of the wheels in the biting sand and the other two on firmer gravel. We were still climbing the slope and the Isuzu engine was running hot. Dick turned on the extra fan and we watched the needle fall from the red. How long had we been in the dunes? Shit! I should have timed it or marked the tripometer. Now, we didn't know where we were, and we didn't know how long it had taken us to get there!

I could hear the steady breathing through my earset as Dick put every ounce of concentration into the drive. He didn't deviate one degree-from due south unless a dune blocked the way. So disorientating was the terrain that it sometimes seemed we must be going round in circles but the compass held true to the heading. 'I think this is the top!' Dick said. It was. With one last surge we made the top of the ridge, the engine roaring with the effort of so much low ratio work.

A beautiful sight! Beneath us was a gradual slope to a flat plateau. No cliffs. No problem. Better still was what we could just see on the horizon; the unmistakable dust plumes of racing vehicles on a track heading south west. 'That's it! Go!

Dick needed no more encouragement. With a war whoop of relief, he pushed the gearbox into high ratio and gunned the Trooper down the slope, relying on the tough Michelin XS tyres to, pummel down the sharp edged rocks that covered the surface. At slower speeds these razor rocks can rip the side walls to shreds but Dick's theory was that if you took them fast they never get near enough to the walls to do any damage. Thankfully, it worked, and after a' no nonsense' traverse of the plateau we finally made the proper track. Dick eased the vehicle over a sand bank and we were back in the race.

-Now we were back in business. 'Right. Let's get on with it.' Dick said, changing up into third and taking an aggressive line through a deeply rutted Wadi which sent us flying up the far bank and crashing down with a spine jolting impact onto the other side. There was no doubt this was the right route. I soon picked up an unmistakable landmark from the route book. We were still on the right side of the checkpoint! That meant we hadn't lost the three hour time penalty and although it had seemed like we were lost forever during that nerve wracking time on the wrong track, it hadn't been more than two hours since leaving the start. Time flies when you can see a years work going down the pan!

We settled down into the routine teamwork of the stage, I kept busy calling the worst of the obstacles and Dick was more than occupied with gear changes and his personal wrestling match with the steering wheel. The track was well chopped up. Deep fech-fech dust was piled up in drifts along the ruts. We were coming up fast behind-one of the big trucks. Every time he hit one of the fech-fech sections a plume of yellow fog engulfed us like an explosion at a talcum powder factory.

In those conditions, visibility approaches absolute zero. Falls of the fine sand drift down the windscreen and the entire interior becomes covered in the stuff as it forces its way in through the gaps in the doors and window slides. No matter how hard you try to keep the stuff out, it will always be a part of the Paris-Dakar.

It's the desert equivalent of an Arctic whiteout. The only thing to do is to drive on through it and hope that there's nothing nasty in the way. After two or three seconds the cloud of dust thins and the driver can see shadows in front. Immediately after that, the vehicle is through the cloud and normal visibility is resumed.

The truck was one of the big turbo charged Mercedes machines It was fast but nothing like as fast as us. Dick started to look for an opportunity to pass and within a few seconds he flicked the Isuzu onto virgin desert to overtake. The rock hard suspension lapped up the impact as we crossed the cement hard ridges of corrugated terrain at high speed. It was a relief to get free of the truck but in front of us were plenty more.

Now we started to pass the first casualties. A Honda bike with a broken fork. A Japanese team in a Toyota with a broken axle. Compared to them, our problems earlier had been nothing. The kilometres flashed past and we reached the checkpoint. Dick screeched to a halt next to the marshal and I handed him the card to stamp. 'How much of the field behind us?' I asked. He replied 'Perhaps 100 vehicles'. That was some relief. Maybe more vehicles than we thought had been caught out by that 'phantom' track. On that reckoning we would have lost about 1 hour 40 minutes on our overall time. We sped off on a clearly defined track from Bir Alagh Oasis past a collection of low buildings and a water pump. There were no people to be seen and the place seemed deserted.

Underneath the Isuzu was a solid metal shield and it began to justify it's existence as the track got littered with rocks. Each one of these football sized rocks could punch a hole in an axle casing or sump but with our complete undercarriage protection we could hit them at fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour and 'glide' over the top. That was the theory. It worked fine unless the rock was particularly big. Unfortunately, like the iceberg that has nine tenths of the surface underwater, an innocent little rock that looks like it will be brushed a side in deep sand can turn out to be a lurking monster. Once or twice we emerged from thick dust or a 'fech-fech' whiteout to find one of these rocks in the way. Nothing for it but to grit the teeth and listen as it scraped a noisy route along the shield and emerged at the tail end split into shrapnel by the impact.

Dick constantly found the brakes lacking. They would fade without notice, leaving us too fast into a deep trench or ditch. It was a problem we had first noticed during the second French prologue at Marseilles before leaving for Africa. As we approached a tight bend, they just vent. 'Pity about the brakes' said Dick. What was wrong with them? We had no time to find out now. We had to keep going.

The dust was now so bad that even the interior side of the windscreen was completely coated. Periodically, a great puff of the stuff would inject itself into the cab. I was kept busy with a handkerchief wiping the windscreen down to give Dick a chance to see where he was driving. Our throats were completely dried out by mid afternoon and I reached down to the high energy food pack that the rally supplies each team with at the start of each day. Stupidly, I had jammed it underneath the seat to prevent it flying around the cab. It was a reasonable theory but the heat down there was phenomenal as the exhaust passed right underneath. The drink containers were almost at boiling point. Nevertheless, with the aid of a straw passed through the visor, we could just sip enough of the juice to give some relief from the dust. Dick was making good time. We were passing quite a few vehicles who were in trouble and overtaking some of the slower teams ahead. One or two of the trucks were driving continuously off the track, following parallel to it and relying on their superior height advantage to give them forewarning of obstacles which would be invisible to the lower 4x4s.

The track began to deteriorate dramatically. Before it had been fairly soft and sandy, with only the occasional badly rutted section to worry about. Now, it seemed to be one great rut.. each one set in stone as hard as cast iron. The Isuzu was really soaking up some punishment now as we shuddered and juddered along the piste. I was bracing my legs against the foot rest as we bucked out of a hidden hole. There was the moments silence as the whole vehicle left the ground and then BANG! Back to Earth again on four wheels and ready for the next flight. I looked down. The foot rest had broken off its mounts. The pressure of my outstretched legs combined with the impact of the jump had snapped it clean off.

Until that incident I hadn't really registered just how vital the foot plate is to the co-pilot in a rally car. When it was there I just braced myself against it automatically and this prevented the worst of the vibration and rattling from shaking me about in the seat. But now it was gone, I had no means of pushing myself into the back of the moulded bucket seat. The harness straps began to cut into my shoulders with every jolt.

If I needed something to take my mind off the discomfort Dick was about to oblige. We accelerated up onto the tail of a Toyota in the hope that the track would widen out and we could pass. There was so much dust spewing out from his wheels that we couldn't see a thing. Dick concentrated on staying the same distance from the shadowy figure before us. The bright tail lights, obligatory for every special stage and mounted high on the roof of every vehicle, are the only part of the vehicle which can be seen in that sort of 'dust-out'.

There was no chance of reading the track. Dick couldn't even see it. The only way to drive was to watch the back of the Toyota like a hawk. When we saw the vehicle buck up into the air we would brake for the obstacle and then race on behind him. The pair of us caught up with some more vehicles and a truck. Now the dust was impossible. At 80 kilometres an hour, we were driving on broken up desert terrain in NIL visibility. Then it happened. A smashing impact underneath the Isuzu told us that we had probably gone off the track. Two sets of tail lights veered crazily before us and then disappeared. Out of the windscreen could be seen nothing but the even billowing of yellow dust. Dick swerved in an effort to get out of the dust and we emerged from it to find ourselves right on the edge of a sheer drop into a river bed. In that split second, as a razor stab of fear gripped me in the guts, I found myself abstractly wondering how deep it was. Two metres? Three? It hardly mattered. If we went down it at this speed it would mean an end over end roll and the probable close of our rally hopes.

Most drivers would have had little time to do more than try and brake before heading into the void, but Dick, his reaction times honed to lightning pitch by years as a top Aerobatic stunt pilot, slewed the Isuzu to the right...back into the tail end of the dust we had been trying to escape from. The manoeuvre brought us sliding out of the obstacle and back onto the piste, having cheated the drop by the skin of our teeth. Almost immediately after, we came to the first major accident, probably the result of a similar set of circumstances. The vehicle was on its roof, the rear axle bent at an acute angle and one wheel sheered off its mounting. The two drivers sat miserably on the sand waiting for rescue. Their vehicle was well beyond repair as the cockpit had taken a heavy roll and the roll cage had clearly bent in as it absorbed the impact. We slowed down to check they were OK but the crash had obviously happened a while back and they waved us on.

A few straggly trees came into vision and we found ourselves in a crocodile of vehicles all held up by each other. The terrain on either side of the track was so bad that overtaking would have meant an immediate crash. In single file, we completed the last kilometres of the stage and managed to overtake a couple more trucks on a wider sand section just before the checkpoint. The marshal took our card and stamped us in with our official time registered on it.

It was still daylight as we did the final forty five kilometres to the night stop which was to be held by the side of Ghadames airport. A big queue of cars was already lining up for fuel as we turned in to the compound and started to look for Keith Parker, our mechanic. He was with us for the duration of the event, flying with the rest of the mechanics in a collection of prop planes which looked as if they should have been pensioned off years ago.,Our arrangement with him was for him to wait for us each night near to the Africatours food truck. Without that sort of specific plan, we could be searching for each other for hours amongst the hundreds of vehicles which were already spread out over kilometres of desert. We made our rendezvous with Keith who was delighted to see us in one piece and thoroughly relieved to be able to speak English once again. Most of the mechanics are French.

We told Keith all about our problems at the start of the stage. He had guessed something must have been wrong as we had not arrived at our expected time. John Saxton and Graham Roberts had put in a good time in their chevy powered Landrover Special. Graham looked pretty excited by the day's driving which, he told us, had seen them skidding along on the nose of the Landrover with the tail several feet up in the air on more than one occasion. John Saxton's All wheel Drive Club track record had him marked as a fast driver and he clearly wasn't going to change his ways for the Paris-Dakar.

I set about putting up our tents and preparing camp while Dick and Keith began a thorough service of the Isuzu. They were pleased with the recently fitted Rear Differential oil cooler unit which was performing well. Dick had been out of the Paris Dakar the previous year with differential failure as a result of overheating oil and this was just one of the many changes which had been made to the vehicle as a result.

As they carried on servicing the Isuzu and talking through its performance through the day, I left to find out what time a meal would be served. Africatours were getting ready for the evening onslaught and a noticeboard told me it would be 8 pm before dinner was served. With no water supply and all their food carried on massive transporter trucks, it was a miracle that they could produce upwards of a thousand meals at all, let alone to a deadline. The menu tonight, typical of a French run event, was Pheasant. Pheasant? In the Sahara? This was getting more and more bizarre.

Keith had done all his routine checks and scrutinised the vehicle from top to bottom. The chassis was showing no hairline cracks or bends (as it had done on previous events) so we were in good shape. The only thing that needed fixing was the foot plate and Keith borrowed John and Grahams small petrol powered welding unit to put it right.

I took my notes with me to the tent to mark up and familiarise myself with the next day stage. It was much longer. This first day had been little more than a 'shake-down' day to get everyone warmed up before the real fun began. We had to keep our sights on the wider objective, getting to Dakar. It would be too easy to get worked up about our bad time to Ghadames. In reality, it would scarcely matter as vehicles started to drop out of the race. We had to concentrate on staying in the running. Two previous Dakar attempts had taught Dick a great deal and I noticed from the way he drove that he was constantly fighting to hit the balance between a fast time, and conserving the vehicle.

We were pretty hungry by the time we joined the line for food. The Pheasant meal was served up in a tin foil container and was edible, if not the Cordon Bleu treat it had promised from the exotically worded menu. Few of the big team stars were at this communal food stop. They were eating specially prepared food in their own canteen trucks and wouldn't emerge until the next day. Their teams of mechanics were even now stripping down the machines and replacing all the suspect components. On all sides, the sound of generators cut through the noise of conversation from the drivers.

'What time is the briefing?' Dick asked. It was at 6 am. geared to be over before the first bikes were away. I would have to attend, even though it would be hours before our departure time arrived. By common agreement we felt it was more important for Dick to get precious sleep than go to the briefing and the most likely outcome of it would be changes to the route book which were my responsibility anyway.

Keith went with the vehicle to start to queue up for a fuel fill up and we hit the sack for sleep. It was a piercingly cold night, with a light wind from the west. The hot hours of the middle of the day seemed like they must have been another country, so radical was the temperature drop.

The noise of generators and revving machinery seemed to go on all night but sleep wasn't hard to lapse into. At 5.45 am, the electronic bleep of the watch woke me up and I stumbled over to the briefing session where a couple of hundred bleary eyed competitors were awaiting the news. At 6 am to the second, Gilbert Sabine took the stage (a table) and told us the worst through the amplified rasp of a megaphone. Even with my limited French I could get the substance of his words. This would be a hard day with few navigation problems, but in the middle of the stage was a very extreme range of dunes which had to be crossed. The whisper was that this dune range was the worst dune territory the Paris-Dakar had ever dared to cross.

Amongst the promised delights were sheer dune faces and drops of fifteen or twenty metres to the desert floor below. It was essential, Sabine advised, to reduce tyre pressure to extremely low pressures. Only then could any vehicle be expected to cross at all. Many would get stuck in the attempt. There was an unmistakable murmur amongst the gathered drivers. His words had sunk home. The only part of the day to worry about was that sand section. We were well prepared with our Michelin XS tyres, arguably the best sand tyres in the world, and our watchword in the vehicle preparation had always been weight saving. I was sure we would come through the dunes with few problems. Wouldn't we?

The wait for our departure was longer than the day before as we were further down the field. More dust to drive in and the tracks would be in worse condition. Also, we ran a greater chance of getting into the night hours for the final couple of hundred kilometres of the stage. The total for the day was 609 kilometres, long enough to be challenging in human terms, as well as a real test for the Isuzu. Dick was as relaxed as ever and we did some recording for the BBC about the problems of the previous day. The microphones were placed in each corner of the cab and could be switched on whenever things got interesting. The recorder, a professional Sony Walkman, was already showing signs of dust damage and was running erratically. My camera, a Nikon, was likewise misbehaving despite being wrapped in five plastic bags.

The starting point was fairly close to the town of Ghadames and, seeing from the Union Jack on our car that we were British, quite a number of local Libyans were keen to practice their English on us. Our initial fears about any backlash towards us following Britain's involvement in the US bombing of Tripoli had proved completely unfounded. Most of the Libyans who spoke to us did mention the incident, but few of them seemed to be revealing any emotions on the subject.

One man at the quayside in Tripoli had imitated the sound of a jet and dive bombed the car with his hands outstretched like a child pretending to be a plane. He laughed and laughed at the joke. We smiled diplomatically in case he was trying to wind us up for a reaction but I think he was, as the Australians would say, one short of a six pack and there was no political irony intended in his actions.

Now, at Ghadames, two Libyan students came up for a chat and we spent a very pleasant fifteen minutes talking to them about the rally and about their experiences in England where they had both been studying. They were pleased the rally was going through Libya as it would increase the Libyan profile in Europe where it's image was often less than shining. It seems crazy to say that a motorsport event could help a country's standing overseas but I have seen several informed pieces in the French press pointing to the Paris-Dakar as the catalyst which sparked off a new era of warmer relations between Libya and France. Of the Colonel himself we had seen nothing despite rumours that he would be there to greet us all off the boat. Whether he is a motorsport fan or not is something I have never been able to confirm.

The outstretched hand went out before us and the seconds ticked away for the start of the stage. If all went well we would be driving into the nightstop at Ghat later the same day having completed 609 kilometres. Dick revved up and we shot forward along the track as the starter signalled us to go. The crowd cheered us off and we were soon progressing along the track, with a long line of cliffs on our right hand side. No chances here of any navigation problems. The red and yellow sand was chewed up nicely by those who had gone before and the going was soft.

Within a couple of hours our confidence was back. The route book was proving straightforward and accurate. Our calibration on the tripometer seemed-to agree remarkably well with the route organisers trip. Dick was in good driving form, his left shoulder giving an occasional involuntary twitch ... a nervous habit I had noticed from our British rallies together when he was lost in concentration. The only conversation between us was the calling of directions and obstacles from me, and the occasional comment from Dick. If I started talking about anything else Dick would begin to get irritable so I left him to concentrate on the drive. The sky was a clear desert blue, with not the least sign of cloud. In a couple of hours it would be getting hot.

The conditions quickly worsened on the track and we started driving off the piste on a flat gravel plain. In front of us was the 'fan' of vehicles all doing the same and trying hard to keep out of each other dust plume. We passed Jacky Ickx in his turbo Lada Samara. He was broken down and had the rapid support truck of his team working flat out on a rear axle. 'Brakes' said Dick, 'You can tell by the smell'. Our own brakes were not performing well, they had constantly faded and waned. Keith had been unable to find the cause but our prospects for the day were about to take a turn for the bad.

'The brakes have gone'. Dick's words penetrated my head with crystal clarity. We were running hard at a jump and despite the fast application of the handbrake, we took it too fast and hit the ground with a sickening thud. Dick was pumping the pedal with his foot. There was obviously no effect at all. No brakes meant our progress would be much slower, we could not approach the obstacles with the classic 'drive hard...brake hard' style that Dick favoured. Instead, my calls would have to be even more scrupulous than usual and Dick would have to rely on engine braking, gear change and handbrake to slow us down. All well and good for the marked obstacles but what about the unmarked holes that we were meeting the whole time? One of those taken too fast could be disastrous.

And if the 'normal' tracks were bad enough then what would happen when we got into the dunes? How would we be able to cross them when the only technique was to blast up the shallow slope at full speed, brake hard at the last second on the crest, and then ease down the steep side in low gear? I put those thoughts out of my mind temporarily and concentrated on the more immediate problems of the track ahead.

The sun was by now high enough to have some impact on the cabin temperature but the searing heat was the least of our worries. Dick got into a jostling side to side combat with an Italian truck which seemed determined to block us. He was probably just taking the best line through the fech-fech but it was uncanny how often he would swerve into our path as we surged forward to overtake. When he did that, Dick was forced to yank up the handbrake and change down a gear to slow us down. Ominously, the handbrake was already showing signs of wearing out ... which was hardly surprising considering the punishment we were giving it.

This dogfight was the highlight of the morning. Every time we tried to pass, we were blocked. The clouds of yellow dust billowing out from the truck were making conditions completely intolerable inside the Isuzu, and the black diesel smoke only added to the effect. At last, the truck wallowed into a hole hidden beneath loose powder sand and the front of the beast soared into the air and crashed down violently onto rocky ground. The suspension of these big racing trucks is liable to create a 'bounce' when the front end comes down like that and the only cure is to slow down. As he did that, we passed easily. Now it was his turn to drive in our dust plume.

Very few people live along this lonely piste and the track looked like it was infrequently used. In that one day of the rally, more vehicles would pass than in an average year. Some tens of kilometres to the west was the Algerian border where some of the richest oil fields in North Africa are located. A line of hills marked the natural border which had inspired the line on the map.

Libya has a very good network of tarmac roads which stretch down surprisingly far into the desert but this region was far too rugged to invite a road building project. I suspect that the 'road to be completed' marked on the map will never be anything more than a mirage.

A steep escarpment gave us some nasty moments as we approached but Dick used the engine to brake our progress down. Then we hit wadis which were filled with deep sand. At first, the Isuzu forged happily through in low ratio third or second gear, but that was when no other vehicles blocked the best line. When we came to a point where we had to swerve onto the really treacherous deeply churned sand to avoid a bogged down machine, we immediately felt the rear of the Isuzu begin to lose traction. Ten metres ahead of us was firm ground. Dick gunned the engine but we were caught in the sand. Around us were other crews digging out.

When I jumped out onto the sand from the cockpit it was a shock to feel how stiff my legs were. The rear of the vehicle was badly bogged and we set to the backbreaking work of digging her clear with two shovels. We achieved this after ten minutes or so and placed the sand ladders under the tyres. It is always tempting to try and get de-bogged without digging all the sand away from the axles but it rarely works and then you have to start again. I watched in satisfaction as the vehicle lurched forward and reached the firm ground. At high speed we loaded the ladders and shovels and carried on.

Jack Ickx caught up and passed us shortly after that first bogging, his Lada smelling extremely hot. Within ten minutes the only sign of his passing was a smudge of dust on the horizon. It was almost possible to sense his anger at the earlier breakdown from the aggressive way he was driving.

The dunes were getting nearer. Soon we would be able to see them. The Hype had been so much a part of the French Press coverage of the route when it was revealed in mid December that people were anticipating this dune section to wipe out a large proportion of the field as had happened in Northern Algeria in 1988. Dick had been one of the victims of that hard section in his first Paris-Dakar event. Would he fail again in the seas of sand? Our earlier, optimistic, mood, had taken a battering after the failure of the brakes.

I heard Dick come through on the intercom; 'I'm going to stop and check out what's happened to the brakes. We may be able to rig a quick repair.' It was a good plan, we were OK for time and both of us had enough experience of dune driving to know that trying to do it without brakes was not a reasonable plan.

We unplugged the helmets and opened the bonnet stays to examine the engine bay. It was heavily stained with the brake fluid which had leaked the system dry and it was clear straight away that we could not rig up a repair on the spot. A section of brake pipe must have been hit by a flying rock for it was well and truly smashed. We had spare fluid and pipe, but it was not a fast job to undertake. It could easily take half an hour or more. We weighed it up and decided that we would have to complete the day section without brakes and rely on Keith to repair the situation at the night stop.

I was putting the bonnet clips back into place as Dick climbed into the cab. I heard a brief metallic clicking noise and then nothing. Dick put his head out and looked at me; 'Now we really have got a problem.' The battery was completely drained of life. It had no charge and was never going to turn the engine over. There was no time to discuss why this might have happened. A couple of hundred metres away from us was a Range Rover special in some sort of trouble. 'See if you can help them get going and get them over here to tow start us'; Dick said.

He got the tow strap out and began to attach it to the front tow point as I sprinted as fast as I could to the Ra nge Rover. As I got there, they fired up the engine and were about to go, having cured whatever problem had brought them to a stop. In basic French I explained what had happened and asked them for a tow start. They didn't look best pleased about losing precious minutes in this way but agreed nonetheless and we were soon back in motion with a live engine.

Dick turned out all the lights and shut down one of the fans. 'We've got to get some charge into the battery.' He explained, 'With the lights on all day and the fans draining power we must have a charging shortfall.' It was part of the rally rules that all vehicles must drive with the lights on but we had no choice.

Getting that tow start had been another lucky break. How many competitors would have stopped in their tracks to give us that assistance? What would happen if we got into the same situation again?

We were so preoccupied trying to work out what had gone wrong with the charging system that we almost missed the sharp change of direction that took us towards the dunes. Suddenly, there they were, towering above a flat plain and looking for all the world as big and impenetrable as a range of mountains. In seven crossings of the Sahara desert I had never seen a sight quite like this ... a track that went straight as an arrow for the heart of the dunes. It is without doubt one of the most extraordinary tracks in the world, and the driving conditions we were about to encounter were to be no less exceptional.

Navigation immediately became almost impossible. The only way we could keep on the correct route was to follow the clear trail of tracks that the previous competitors had left behind. The route book had compass directions and distances but the track twisted and turned itself into knots in its efforts to skirt the bigger dunes and find the line of least resistance. The tops of the larger sand walls had metal poles or old truck tyres placed as a warning marker that the crest was imminent.

There was another 60 kilometres of dunes ahead of us as the battle began. Dick employed the normal technique of racing as fast as possible at the face and getting the momentum to carry us up. The tyres were deflated to about 10 psi and this gave more 'spread' of tread on the sand, reducing the pressure on the crust for each square inch of rubber. At the top, Dick yanked hard on the handbrake to slow us up and crashed into low gear. The evil aspect of these dunes is that you never know what is over the crest. Sometimes the downward face is moderate and not a problem. Other times, it is genuinely near to vertical. These were the steepest I had ever seen.

Our lack of brakes caused Dick countless problems here. If he went at the face too fast, we ran the risk of flying uncontrollably over the crest and doing an end over end on to the floor. If he went too slow, we would bog down near the summit and be forced to retreat back down and try again. Worst of all is that when you are going up these steeper dunes, you can't actually see the crest. All you can see is sky, making the driver's judgement critical if the dune is to be tackled in one bite. On the way down, the front of the vehicle can dig into the soft sand at the bottom and cause a roll. Dick had come within an ace of this on a previous event and had stoved in his radiator at the same time. These dunes are dangerous. Bogged down vehicles were a frequent sight, as were the occasional abandoned bike.

The maximum warning sign contained within the route book was -a triple exclamation mark. An average day might contain a dozen or so of these at points where a lack of caution could prove dangerous. On this dune stage the route book was simply packed with triple exclamation marks marking the dune crests as they stacked up one after the other. Each kilometre might contain five or six. The task had Dick lost in concentration and his left hand was kept busy pulling on the handbrake with all his force to slow us down at the tops.

Ten, fifteen kilometres passed by in a switchback sequence of dune crossings before we finally got bogged down. The reason was an abrupt change of line to avoid another stranded vehicle and this took us off the shallow sand and into the deep. Dick left the engine running as we evacuated the cockpit to begin the backbreaking dig. This time it was not so simple. We were stuck into the routine that desert travellers know all too. well; dig out, sand ladders, move forward a few yards, bog down, dig out, sand ladders, etc etc. I knew just by looking at the depth of sand that we would be in for at least six or seven of these punishing sequences.