While her friends and colleagues were surfing the waves in Australia, North Shore professional surfer Bethany Hamilton decided she wanted to surf the dunes of Morocco. But a simple trip wouldn’t do, so she decided to compete in the 23rd
While her friends and colleagues were surfing the waves in Australia, North Shore professional surfer Bethany Hamilton decided she wanted to surf the dunes of Morocco.
But a simple trip wouldn’t do, so she decided to compete in the 23rd Rallye Aicha des Gazelles, an off-road racing rally that stretches across southern Morocco.
The competition was held March 19 to 30, and it ended up being a trip of a lifetime.
“Initially, I have never even thought about driving cars or racing,” Hamilton said. “In fact, usually when I am home, if I have anyone with me, I will be in the passenger seat. But I have always been interested in going to Morocco. It just seems like an amazing country that is so unique to anywhere else I have traveled, so initially that was my first draw.”
Hamilton was catapulted in the national spotlight when she lost her arm in a 2003 shark attack while surfing at Tunnels Beach. She was a promising young surfer, and her ability to overcome adversary and still compete on the professional level was the subject of the film “Soul Surfer,” which was based on her autobiography.
The rally was an all-female competition that is completely off-road and consists of a prologue and six legs, two of which are marathon legs that last two days. Participants must conquer more than 1,500 miles across a number of different terrain, including the sandy dunes of the western Sahara Desert.
The winner is not necessarily the team that finished the fastest, but rather the team that finishes with the least amount of distance traveled in between checkpoints. Rules also inhibit the competitors from using GPS or cell phones, but teams are supplied with a compass, a map and miles of open terrain.
Hamilton would go on to do the majority of the driving — with the use of one arm — while her partner Chrissie Beavis did the navigating. The duo competed against 126 other teams in their division.
Not only did Hamilton and Beavis finish the rally on their first attempt, they placed in the top 10 with an eighth place finish — by far the best of any Americans competing in Morocco.
“Coming into it my goal was to finish in the top 20,” Hamilton said. “We were able to finish eighth overall, which was really amazing. The more you do the rally, you realize how extremely hard it is. But my partner (Beavis) was really amazing and we got along really well and that helped.”
Hamilton said the terrain was intense to navigate, and the event was exhausting both mentally and physically.
“So much of it is just endurance,” Hamilton said. “Every morning you are waking up at 4 a.m., and you usually don’t finish until sunset, so you have be focused the entire day and it is exhausting. By day five, we both kind of hit a wall, and we had a really rough day and were so out of it. We were about halfway to a checkpoint around midday and we just pulled under a tree and took a nap. We realized we had time and stopped and regrouped, which really helped us.”
In addition, both Beavis and Hamilton had to remain extremely focused on the terrain for fear of getting stuck.
“We got stuck one day about three times, each was pretty bad,” Hamilton said. “Then we were almost back to the bivouac, and I put on music because we were so happy and stoked to be done with the rough day. We were about a half of a kilometer away, when we got stuck in this little sand pit of doom. I wasn’t particularly concerned going into it, but our car was already pretty jacked up, but we finally crawled out of it.”
After getting themselves out of the pit, Hamilton and Beavis ran into more trouble. One of the vehicle’s tires hit a large rock causing it to break a tie rod leaving the vehicle inoperable.
“The rules of the competition is that competitors can help each other,” Hamilton said. “We found a really great team that helped us and towed us back. So we managed to get the car back to the mechanic and it actually felt pretty good the next day.”
Just as she has done under arduous situations in the past, Hamilton figured out a way to keep competing and strive for success.
“I think its fun to have adventure in life and try new things,” Hamilton said. “I think being here on Kaua‘i there is so much adventure to have, but sometimes you just have to realize there is this whole world out there to go out and explore and so many cool things to experience.”
