During ME4x4’s Camel Spider Trophy, Ian “The Dog” Barker, David “Streaky” Chambers and myself got talking about finishing off the last of the Oman land based Confluence Points. For those of you unaware of what this might be please check DEGREE CONFLUENCE PROJECT
In brief, the goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures, and stories about the visits are posted on the site.
I had already completed two of the confluence points on previous trips with other friends, however for Oman, there was still four left unattempted and one failed attempt.
As time progressed it seemed unlikely that “The Dog” would be able to come along so we looked for another vehicle from within the Green Oval community of ME4x4 to join us. Unfortunately this was not possible as most other Landy owners had other commitments and could not arrange for a week away from work.
By now the planning had already been put on paper, with milages (should be kilometerages really) calculated as best as possible using Tactical Pilot Charts (TPC) J7D and J7C, as well as information from many of my previous visits to Oman on downloaded tracks and waypoints using Mapsource (Garmin).
Our planned Confluence visits were N18E53, N19E53 and N19E55. However somebody by the name of James Scully had already made a note that he intended to visit N19E53 with a window period of almost a year from November 2005, and had as yet not posted anything. Given that almost 6 months had passed and with summer fast approaching with temperatures rising close to 50°C during the summer months we decided that N19E53 was to be included in our itinerary as it was doubtful that Mr Scully would be doing this trip in the near future.
As we approached the dates we had planned for the trip, it was clear that there would be only the two of us on this trip and from our stable of vehicles Streaky would be using his two-door 4.6L SI Disco, and I would be using the older of my SII Discos having deciding to leave our respective 130 and 90 Defenders back in UAE.
We both carried Engel Fridges inside each vehicle as well as another spare wheel on the roofrack. Additionally because fuel availability had not been confirmed at Shisr, Streaky had five 20L, and myself six 20L containers of fuel inside our respective vehicles. Navigation was done mainly using Garmin GPS units with Streaky using a 128 backed up by a Magellan unit, and I had a 172 backed up with an eTrex. Maps used were primarily TPCs along with some other older maps of Oman (APEX and Geo) and a compass.
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