Aquarius 2005

Stewart Anderson & Ewan Leeming Win Aquarius 2005

The Aquarius Rally 2005 took place on Saturday 2 February. It was a round of the ESACC Road Rally Championship and took in 120 miles of roads in Perth & Kinross, starting and finishing at the Kinross Services. There was a little hint of the previous year's snowstorm, with just a few flakes falling toward the northern extremity of the route. Other than that and rain showers, the weather was good. A starry, starry night that could have spelled ICE.

A disappointing count of 12 crews left Kinross services and flew around some great roads in the east of Perthshire, going as far north as Crieff. Instead of the normal 90 mile route, the crews faced a total of 120 miles of back roads.

The first section of the rally was uneventful, getting the crews into the way of things. Slowly, the penalties started to mount. By TC3, among the Open class, only Anderson/Leeming had clean sheets and, by the fourth, even they had dropped a minute. The other two crews had dropped a code - the same code. But that was the only code penalty given in the Open class - all of the others were down to dropped time. By the half-way halt (TC10), Merry/Shanks had lost 15 minutes. Rae/Mollison just eight. Had it not been for the code penalty, they would have been leading - Anderson/Leeming were 17 minutes late into TC6 and almost undid all of their good work. Only one more penalty was collected in the Open class - Merry/Shanks icking up a last-minute penalty at the final control. So Stewart Anderson & Ewan Leeming returned to Kinross as overall victors. Ian Rae & Kevin Mollison took a compensatory class win.

A night without incidents, and a great route and test of navigational skill. Well done lads. And well done Alan Cowan who organised the event all on his ownio. A tough job!