NZ Palma Team Report 4
Saturday 1 August:
On Thursday night we had a team meal at the Shores, the management allowed us to use their bbq area near the pool, great food was provided by Mat and family as well as Chris, Alan, Bradley and William. Everyone was there apart from Kevin who was in bed sick.
Our house is running well and we appreciate having Jan to shop and cook for us. Our team vehicle is making frequent stops at Tofts ice-cream store. They have 51 flavours and with 2 flavours per one scoop cone it is going to take a while to try them all. No one is counting the calories per visit but the ice-creams are bigger than the dairy by the Colonial Motel in Blenheim.
We all had to line up to be squadded for shooting today. The line moved fairly fast.
There is a real rhythm to shooting here, a bit like being on a treadmill. You have two minutes to get your gear on the mound before the three minute preparation time, when your target is available to sight on. As soon as your shooting time is up you get your gear off the mound and score for the next shooter. If you score first and your shooter takes most of the time it is a rush to get ready to shoot. When you and your partner have shot you either go back to the next range to shoot again or down to the butts to mark. You have to fit your lunch into the short breaks in the butts or the trailer ride there and back.
If you were in the second relay today you would have scored for the first shooter, then shot at 800, travelled to the butts and marked targets for the 3rd and 4th relay while they shot 800 and 900. Travelled back from the butts and scored at 900 before shooting at 900. Then moved back to 1000 and scored, then shot, before travelling to the butts to mark targets for the other two relays.
Some of us are having a bit of a struggle with sighting. It is very dark first thing in the morning. At the longer ranges it is quite difficult to read your target number. With 6 by 6 targets a few feet apart there is not lots of room for big numbers. The trips to the butts allow you to see that some of the problem reading numbers is caused by the somewhat interesting angles the number boards are set at.
There was good shooting by team members today, Scores were out of 450, we shot a one day Palma course but on the American target scoring out of 10.
Bevan lead the way with 449.25, great shooting to be only one point down, he was 4th on the range. He was followed by John S - 444.28, Richard - 444.17, Irene - 444.16, Amy - 443.17 and Charlotte -443.16.
The Tompkins Aggregate was completed today, congratulations to Charlotte who was the top scoring Under 25 (Junior) and 4th place in the master class.
