Tankwa Cross Country Rally on a 1200 GS

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detour

Pack Dog
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I'll write and post this ride report in sections - one for each day of the race.  Work is keeping me busy, so it may take a few days to finish it! Unfortunately, I didn't take that many photos at the event, but will post the ones I have.

Prologue

A few of my friends entered to ride in the Tankwa Cross Country Rally this year.  I do suffer from a rather serious case of FOMO when bike riding is involved… so a plan had to be made.

At this point it is worth mentioning that I had been tempted to try my hand at rallies before.  In 2017 I bought a 501, long range tanks etc - determined to ride the West Coast Baja and Amageza the following year.  Unfortunately, Alexander passed away and the future of those rallies seemed uncertain.  I sold the bike and got a KTM 300 in its place.  There are many enduros and funduros that one can ride, so the switch made sense to me.

Back to Tankwa.  I had a few options… my 300 would work in the silver off-road class.  Someone also generously offered to lend me a 701 for the event.  And then there was my 1200GS.  Out of these three options the GS was the obvious underdog.  That is exactly why I started wondering if it would be possible to do the Tankwa Rally on a big adventure bike.  Off course there is only one way to find out…

I called Clive and asked him if there were any major step ups along the way - the kind that would not be doable on a big adventure bike.  His response was that it would be very tough to do it on a big adventure bike, but that he didn’t think that there were obstacles that couldn’t be ridden or at least avoided by taking a penalty.  He also confirmed that it hadn’t been done on a GS or 1090/1190/1290 before, so this would be a first.  Temptation raised ;)

My second call was to David Ellis (Watch his YouTube videos if you don’t know who he is!).  David said it might be possible to do it on a big adventure bike and that it would be a ‘lekker’ challenge. 

At this point my mind was made up.  This would be a good test for both the bike and for myself.  The only real failure would be to not even attempt it. The next day I entered to race in the Gold Big Bore class.  This class would run the same route as the Rally class but would navigate by GPS instead of roadbook. 

My primary goal was to successfully complete all stages in the Rally class route with myself and my bike intact.  Ideally, without having to cut out any parts of the intended route – so without penalties.  Secondary to that – and this I kept mostly to myself – I wanted to see if I could beat the total time of at least one of the Rally class bikes.  This is not comparing apples with apples, but still a valuable reference.  More on that later.

Preparation

I decided to take the bike pretty much “as is” with the exception of fitting a new pair of Pirelli Scorpion Rally tires and carrying an 18” heavy duty tube – in case one of my tires got a bad cut.  This is something I carry on longer expeditions as well.  My standard adventure toolkit stayed on the back of my bike, I wore my adventure riding suit and carried my expedition backpack from Leatt with a medical kit, 2x2l hydration bladders and some protein bars.  My goggles were also in my backpack (something that I don’t usually take on adventure rides) and that turned out to be VERY useful in the dust.

In our group we had three gazebos, synthetic grass (lent to us by Synsport), tools, consumables and all the camping equipment one needs for a weekend like this.  It is great to do this with a group of friends!

You need to take all the fuel that you’ll need for the entire race along.  I decided to take 110l for the GS – that would allow me to complete the race at anything better than 11km/l. 

I didn’t take any spare parts, spare tires, oil etc. along. 

As far as I was concerned, this was basically going to be like an adventure ride – just a bit faster ;)

 

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