It seems that although our training, ventilation, ice-vests, hydration regime and general gutsiness has proved more than sufficient to allow our riders to cope with the heat, our batteries are not as strong-willed. The techies worked with amazing efficiency last night to isolate the electrical fault that caused our problems yesterday, still managing to get packed up and in bed by a reasonable hour.  What they discovered is that the tropical heat was causing the batteries to prematurely shut down. In other words, the batteries thought they were heating up due to overload, and turned themselves off as a protective mechanism, when in fact the intense climate of the top end was a large contributor to their temperature. Thanks to hard work by Mark and Aaron the problem was in part rectified by replacing our circuit-breakers with fuses and adjusting the configuration of the batteries. Invaluable assistance was also given by Alan Strange, our “phone-a-friend” lifeline in Ballarat. Our unstoppable techies are still working to resolve the problem, but all in all things are definitely improving.

As a result, the ride day ran very smoothly. After our indulgent sleep-in until 4:30am and our usual pack-up procedure, we were on the road at about 5:30 and although we still have some technical bugs to iron out, in general it has been a great day. Rather than the 325km that we had budgeted for, we discovered that we in fact had 415km to travel (thanks a lot Google maps!) but travel them we did, and with relative ease and success. Many of our riders came off the bike for changeovers saying that they would have preferred to keep going. The longest ride for the day was Alistair, who clocked up 70km, while several riders including Brian and Lucas persevered though gruelling HPV stints with no motor.  Jacob Holmes and Jay Matherson shone in their new roles as cattle-grid officers, managing our safety mat, which allowed the bike to pass smoothly over the first of many cattle grids to come.

It might only be 8:30pm, but that’s lights-out here in Renner Springs. Another early start awaits us tomorrow.

View photos here.

GG