An early rise for us this morning on Christmas eve day, so it was safe to say that our Fellas and Felicitas were in a merry mood.

This morning we were also greeted buy some low flying hot air balloons, with friendly waves and seasons greetings from the passangers above put us in even better spirits.

Deflating was a bit slow this morning and gave a chance to highlight how to improve on efficiency of this drive preparation. Warm up was also a bit slow the first few minutes and immediately had a few second tries that would set the tone for the sweeper the rest of the day.

This area had a good mix of small to medium dune which gave us an opportunity to cover many techniques and lessons, the convoy even had some fun with the donuts exercise before some nice flowing and quicker passed side slopes towards the technical area.

Low rage was engaged as everyone made their way through the tight, twisting, tiny dunes. This was a fun experience for most as it really helps to get to know their cars movement in the dunes more and after a 30min with minimal incidents the desert started to reveal some bigger but still technical dunes.

Here we had a number of second tries, stucks and our progress was slow while sweeper was busy. We also had an incident with recovery point and soft shackel failing, highlighting the importance of rated recovery points that are built for purpose. Thankfully no one was injured and only slight cosmetic damage to the vehicles.

As the  dunes opened up so did the throttles bringing the pace back up on some nice long side slopes towards the exit where we met some of our other Fellas for a nice Xmas eve brunch before heading home.

Thank you all for a special morning and Hussam for sweeping duty. Have splendid Xmas with friend and family, see you on the sand soon.