Navigator and I are having a slow start to our TSD season. We finished fourth in the first rally, and fourth or worse in the second one (two weeks ago). The first one we can chalk up to beginning of the year jitters, but the second one was a result of poor rallymaster work and a simple yet costly mistake on our part.
Very early on (I think it was the third NRI after the transit stage), there was a pause 60 for a signal. The light was red when we came around the corner about 300 yards from it, and we were stationary for 75 seconds. I was pissed about this shoddy pre-run work, but we pulled across, stopped for a few seconds, and filled out a 30-second time dec to make up for it. Then we forgot to give it to the first checkpoint, and took a 33 late on the leg . The second leg went very well, and we were surprised at the end of it to see that we had a score of over 100. Turned out the rallymaster screwed up again, and had the official distance off by over a mile. That stage was dropped altogether. The third stage didn't have any glaring errors on our part, but our score wasn't spectacular. If we'd turned in our time dec we would've been second, but as it was we missed out again. No mistakes next month!
This is the second time that particular club has run a rally where there was both a too-short pause at a signal and a leg dropped for lack of a good pre-run. I'm not impressed with them.