Defending National Navigation champion navigator, Tydavnet man Ryan Treanor along with his Longford driver Shane Dalton finished a solid 2nd place overall on last weekend’s opening round of the 2022-23 National Navigation Championship. The pair finished the event on 12 marks and secured 16 points for the championship. Inchigeelagh Co. Cork was the location of Round 1 with COC Aaron O’Regan assisted by Niall Murphy organising the first of two Cork Motor Club navigations this season. The event began at 22:45, and disaster would immediately befall defending Drivers Champion Darragh Kelly with Oisín Sherlock navigating. Unfortunately, barely a kilometre into the event, they would clip a rock hidden in the undergrowth and severely damaged the passenger side wishbone in their Subaru and no matter how much wishing they did, the bone could not be repaired and early retirement followed. The first third of the event took place in the vicinity of villages, Tooms, Teerelton, and Kilmichael. Check points Via 8 and Timepoint 9 were accessed through farm lanes in the townland of Ballina and it was here that most crews dropped time due to the sheer slippiness of the cow tracks. Eventual winners and former national champions Derek Butler/Denis O’Donovan were almost caught out here, but some quick reactions from Derek made sure he kept his Impreza between the fence posts.
The first plot and bash of the night was handed out at TP 15 for TP’s 17 and 18. Navigators had to be very accurate with their directions as both plot and bash TPs were close by and wrong approaches would be very easily picked up due to the amount of information already on the map as the event was passing through the same area later on. The ITC section turned out to be the trickiest part of the night. The ITC was defined by grid references for some of the junctions along the route, unlike the commonly used box tulip diagram with every junction included. The ITC was also timed at 50kph unlike the normal 30mph. The most unfortunate here were the team of Michael Carbin/Conor Mohan who took the wrong direction at a junction and dropped 1:30s or in ITC terms, 9 marks. Only for this ‘easy to make mistake’ they may well have finished 2nd OA. Butler/O’Donovan would also make a similar error and would drop 4 of their 5 marks on this section due to the difficulty and the very twisty roads. The next p&b section was at TP39 with crews receiving plots for TP 40 and 41. The approach to TP40 was down a farm lane which brought competitors out directly opposite the Kilmichael Ambush Monument before heading to TP 41 in the same location as TP19 just south east of Kilmichael village. This TP signalled the event returning to area used earlier and maps became very muddled as there were TP’s no matter where competitors turned. Via 42 was in the same location as TP 16. P&b TP 43 was in the same farm as TP 18 apart from having to take a different lane on the approach and p&b TP 44 was in the same location as TP 15. This was enough to give any experienced navigator a headache. Control 45 spelled the end of the rat race and navigators could breathe a sigh of relief that they survived a very demanding but enjoyable event.
So in the end it was Butler/O’Donovan who were winners on a total of five marks, Dalton/Treanor finished 2nd OA and 1st Expert on 12 marks and Gar Collins/Patrick O’Sullivan finished 3rd OA on 14 marks. Carbin/Mohan would finish 4th OA and 2nd Expert on 15 marks. Aaron McElroy was super sub for Conor Boylan and he guided Derek Mackarel to 5th OA and 1st Novice on 16 marks. A small navigation error cost Derek and Aaron a better result as they were almost at a TP before Aaron, realizing he was approaching from the wrong direction and had to correct himself resulting in a few minutes dropped. They were also caught out on the exceptionally difficult ITC route like many others and most of their penalties came from there. Round 2 of the National Navigation Championship takes place in Monaghan with the Drumlin Navigation taking place on Saturday November 12th.
