[yamaniac]

It was really a fantastic meet! We really had fun. A lot of unexpected adventures happened.. .. I suggest let the pictures do the talking... Post it soon guys!!

[sudhirbhan]

Thanks for all folks who attended today's meet and made it a memorable event.

It was indeed a great meet; five of us - James, Lohith, Samurai, Yamaniac and yours truly- converged at Dockap's house by 12 noon.

Yamaniac's MM540 and Samurai's Grand Vitara


James' SX4 and my Swift VDi


LohithRao's Palio Adventure


Dockap's Optra Magnum


Mangalore-Udupi chapter gets going.
L-R: Lohith, Yamaniac, Samurai, James, Dockap


After a brief round of self-introductions and a chat about our rides, we set
out for Dockap's farm house located about 15 KMs away.

[james]

It couldnt have been any better.. We ate, drank sprite and pepsi, talked about cars and general coastal stuff, helped fish 2 vehicles outta the sand, carried pieces of concrete, tied ropes, watched the sunset and took pics. It was a great day and my respect for yamaniac's jeep just increased!

[yamaniac]

Originally Posted by james

It couldnt have been any better.. We ate, drank sprite and pepsi, talked about cars and general coastal stuff, helped fish 2 vehicles outta the sand, carried pieces of concrete, tied ropes, watched the sunset and took pics. It was a great day and my respect for yamaniac's jeep just increased!

haha! lol! I still cant stop smiling thinking about what happened today! It was simply awesome fun... hey you forgot to mention those coconut leaves loaded in the back of the jeep for the rescue operation!

My humble Thanks to DC ponuraj that he demolished a couple of houses so that we could put the debris to some good use...

Dude!!! This is one documentary that is gonna make history on the T-bhp meets !!

[sudhirbhan]

Lunch and refreshments being taken out of the trunk. Thanks to James and Dockap, the menu was exhaustive with veggie as well as non veg items, some of which were from the best know Chinese food joints in Mangalore


Once we were settled down, it was time for Bonda aka YeLneeru aka Tender Coconut from Doc's farm. That's yours truly, LohithRao and Samurai enjoying the bonda.


Appetizer


Yamaniac tries his hand at photography. Little did we know that he would lead us to the adventure of the day in the next couple of hours
L-R:Samurai, Your's truly, James, Dockap and LohithRao


Group photo - thanks to Vijay, the caretaker of Dockap's farmhouse.

[sudhirbhan]

We set off to the estuary, where the local river (name yet to be found out ) meets the Arabian Sea. On the way, there were a number of palatial houses in a demolished state - due to the recent demolition drive undertaken by district administration under CRZ act.

Hereon I will let the pics do the talking . Fellow TBHPians, try re-constructing the adventure based on the pics that follow

[sudhirbhan]

Adventure continues with the never-say-die attitude















Thanks to the perseverance of the team as well as timely help from some good samaritans, we are finally back on the firm terra firma.

Thank You Yamaniac for getting us into this unforgettable adventure .
Samurai sir, expert comments please...


One of the demolished beach mansions. Apparently more than 1.5 crore had been spent on it. Demolition squad zeroed in barely days before house warming ceremony. Entire stretch looks like a war zone.

[sudhirbhan]

Back from the adventure and time for some refreshments.



Finally the sun sets and its time to say good-bye.



Girish, Kraft Wagen and others who missed this event, we shall have the next one in April. I am sure there will be mini-meets in the interim.

Thanks everyone for making the time spent today an extremely enjoyable one.
Special thanks to James for initiating this meet and Dockap for playing the role of a perfect host.

[yamaniac]

Originally Posted by sudhirbhan

We set off to the estuary, where the local river (name yet to be found out ) meets the Arabian Sea. On the way, there were a number of palatial houses in a demolished state - due to the recent demolition drive undertaken by district administration under CRZ act.

Hereon I will let the pics do the talking . Fellow TBHPians, try re-constructing the adventure based on the pics that follow

lol! I was seriously thinking that i had to spend the night there in the jeep, If it couldn't be fished out! Thanks guys will give you more adventures next time.. I promise!

Thankyou sudhirban for these awesome pics!! Thanks guys for making this meet a success and fun!

[Samurai]

Here is a short report on the day. I started from Manipal at 10:45AM and rendezvoused with James at Nantoor circle in Mangalore at exactly 12PM. Then we continued to Kadri to reach dockap's home.

In the poll, 6 people had voted for this day's meeting, and only those 6 were present.

dockap, james, lohithrao, Samurai, sudhirbhan, yamaniac

yamaniac was the last to join with his recently done up MM540. Soon we took off for the beach house at Ullal. The house was about 200 meters from the beach. We sat around talked for the next 3 hours over fried chicken/gobi, etc. Finally had our lunch at 4PM, and took off to the beach point in GV and MM540.

yamaniac was very keen to do offroading in the beach, but I was wary as usual. For me sand is a scary offroad terrain. I have never taken my all-terrain tyre equipped Jeep to the beach until now. All my earlier beach drives were done in GV, after checking the beach sand quality thoroughly since the firmness differs from beach to beach. And I drive fast on soft sand to ensure I don't get bogged down. So far GV has managed not to get stuck in sand. But I have been stuck in beach in the Baleno, so I know the beach pitfall very well. The HT tyre performs better in sand than AT or MT tyres since the vehicle needs floatation rather than traction. Actually bald tyres or slicks are best for sand offroading.

Anyway, I walked the trail first with yamaniac and identified a path which looked firm enough since it had a light mesh of greenery over the sand. To start with I had no plans of taking the GV, but I decided to follow the MM540 eventually.

yamaniac takes off and gets stuck almost immediately. May be this is the time to reveal that this MM540 is a 2WD, with a dead axle in the front. I asked to reverse back and then retry it again with more momentum. But when he tried that again, the sand killed his speed, and he again gets stuck, this time royally.





Now I had bring out the GV to pull him out. Right now I am thinking that it is just one bad patch, if I pull him front, we can continue further closer to the sea. So I drive out the GV, taking a wide turn around the MM540, and I can feel the vehicle drifting in the sand as I turn, but the momentum pushed me through and I am now in the firmer sand section, but only just...

We don't even a real tow rope. yamaniac has this 3/4 inch thick cloth rope, which at the most has 250kg limit, more suitable for mountaineering than Jeep towing. And we had no hooks or d-shackle of any kind. If the rope breaks, we will be hit with a cloth rope, which can't be that bad.

The first attempt to pull him out fails as the rope come off. But I have gone little ahead. By now I have realised that the ground under me is not that firm, I can feel GV slightly digging into the ground. For the second attempt, I decide to go forward, and turn into a heavily grassed area of the beach which is lot more firm. So I continue further and then stop. I am stuck.



I soon realise I might be in a bigger soup than the Jeep. As I looked at the gap between the tyre and the wheel arch (in the following pic), I get a sinking feeling. That gap means only one thing, the chassis is sitting on the ground, the tyres won't have traction. I have been here before, with the same vehicle. However, the driver side wheel well and the rear wheel weels don't have any gap. That's the only good news.



It was time to focus on the GV now. So we cleared the sand around the tyres and placed thick stones to help with the traction. We were able to drive it back a little. Now I get down and see huge wheel well gaps on both sides in the front. Now the entire front end chassis is sitting on the ground. Now we had a much bigger problem on hand. Either we had to clear the sand under the front chassis so that the weight is back on the tyres, or we need to pull the GV from behind using another vehicle.

So we went back to the Jeep which is in a lot better shape. It has only 2 wheels in the stuck position, but they are the powered wheels. I suggested pushing forward into the grassed section. But dockap suggested pushing it back in reverse. This MM540 is very light considering it has no top, and no 4WD system. So 5 of us were able to push it back over the sand and into the thick grassy section which I had barely noticed before. So the MM540 was free. Basically it did about 10ft of sand offroading, got stuck, push back into the grass and free.

Now we were back at the GV, repeating the same procedure of clearing sand and placing stone blocks, we even put dry coconut fronds this time. However by now the front chassis is heavily sitting on the sand, the progress is zero. Somebody suggests lifting the front using a jack and placing rocks under the tyres. But I have been there too. When you lift an IFSed body, the body keeps raising, but the tyres remain on ground for first few inches. When the tyre does raise and you place the rocks, and you start lowering, the body will keep coming down until it is suspended. Chances are it will still sit on the ground unles you have significantly raised the platform under the tyres. Besides, we will need hi-lift jack with lift-mate or bumper-lift for that attempt.

By now I was convinced that GV needs to be towed from behind to get out of this position. It won't be able to get out by itself. The only other vehicle we had was a 2WD MM540, and with a cloth rope. I started wondering whether we can get a Tata 407 to get me out of this plight.

Suddenly some 10 strangers came by and right away started rescue operations. Their leader was giving instructions and telling us what to do etc. Quickly I realised that someone will soon ask for the keys so that they can expertly drive it out. So I quickly caught hold of their leader and told him I know what we are doing, that I have experience in offroad/4x4 driving and rescue, and that I have full recovery gear and winch in my other vehicle, etc. He was initially nodding in a patronising way, until he heard the word winch. Then he suddenly changed his tone and asked what needs to be done. I said we need pushing help, while the Jeep is pulling. But I was very sceptical about the two ropes we were using, one was 250kg capacity cloth rope and the other was a jute rope used for pulling water from the well. I guess I am spoiled by all the high-quality tow ropes we use in offroad events.

So we tried one more time. We had 10 people pushing the GV back, and the 2WD MM540 pulling back using the two ropes. The well water rope snapped off as expected, but the collectively effort was enough to push the GV out of the sand and into the grassy knoll before the second rope could give out. We were finally out of our self-inflicted mess. yamaniac, you need to get a real tow rope soon if you are to venture into any more beaches.

Then we drove back to dockap's house. Checked out the sunset, talked some more, took some photos and finally said our farewells at 7PM.

The Parking lot at dockap's beach home:

dockap's Peted Optra Magnum



yamaniac's 2WD MM540



My GV



The view from the parking lot



The participants (Samurai, dockap, lohithrao, yamaniac, james, sudhirbhan)



If not for these two offroading misfits (2wd MM540 and GV), today would have been lot less interesting.

My thanks to all for showing the offroader's spirit, dockap's hosting, James for his intitiative in arranging this event.

[girishpv]

Wowww, wowwww........Great meet guys, I missed it

Never mind, we will have one more in April 3rd.

[deutscheafrikar]

I've been following this thread closely, very interesting. Hope you guys have many more enjoyable meets. Good pics. I would have loved to be there.
So dockap are you in Kadri?
Regards

[deadman]

Hope you guys enjoyed working-out with jeep....

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by yamaniac

lol! I was seriously thinking that i had to spend the night there in the jeep, If it couldn't be fished out!

While driving back, I was thinking about this. We were incredibly lucky that GV came unstuck so easily without needing real recovery gear. Last time I got stuck in a similar fashion, I had to leave the GV overnight and come back with a 407 next morning to pull it out.

[sudhirbhan]

Originally Posted by Samurai

While driving back, I was thinking about this. We were incredibly lucky that GV came unstuck so easily without needing real recovery gear.

We have to thank horsepower (GV + MM540) coupled with manpower (TBPians + good samaritans who were the turbo boost )

Originally Posted by Samurai

Last time I got stuck in a similar fashion, I had to leave the GV overnight and come back with a 407 next morning to pull it out.

He he he. After hearing about shady characters from the other side of the border crossing the river in the dead of the night, I doubt if there would have been a need for you to return with a 407.