Sep12

Written by:Steve Hart
9/12/2009 6:25 PM 

We arrived in Argentia Newfoundland at 2:30 pm and we had a beautiful smooth crossing. We are grateful that we did not run into any storms like that did two weeks ago (hurricane Bill) when everyone on board was sick. Tom caught a fleeting glimpse of a whale and otherwise there were blue skies and calm seas. There were about 200 people on board (capacity is 1200) and many of the people that we talked to were from Kingston, Ont. Rochester, Newark NY, Silver Lake, ect... We talked to two  guys from Owego, NY who were going to Newfoundland to moose hunt. They cautioned us not to run into any moose as there are over 100,000 on the island. We assured them we would not. After arriving in Argentia we had a 125 Kilometer (about 80 miles) drive to St. John's. We arrived in St. Johns around 4:30pm and completed our registration and we met Scott and the service crew who showed us our car. We toured the car exhabit area and saw some amazing cars. Porsche's, BMW's Subaru's Mini Coopers, NSU's, Sunbeam, Audi's, ect.. Many of the cars in the open Targa division are very serious racing cars and they have large pit crews that travel with them. That division starts after ours so we will see them flying by as we are racing. While we were sitting in our car getting familiar with the equipment three young lads came up to us and asked for our autographs, little did they know. Tomorrow we start bright and early with a mandatory breathalyzer test and a safety meeting. Then Tom and I will take the car out for some practice before the two short practice races. Tom is reviewing the manual for our new rally computer and we are going over the race rules before we turn in for the night.