Transcontinental Race (London - Istanbul) - #TCRNo4

Someone was asking about the finish a few pages back so I looked it up in the race manual.

The finish line is in Çanakkale, on the eastern side if the Dardanelles. This essentially forces riders into taking a ferry at some point. Of course, it would be possible to reach Çanakkale overland, however this would involve routing through Istanbul and around the sea of Marmara adding over 400km to the journey (as well as Istanbul traffic to boot!).

Assuming that no one is ludicrous enough to go the long way around, there are several ferry options:

Eceabat -> Çanakkale
Kilitbahir -> Çanakkale
Gelibou -> Lapseki (then ride to Çanakkale)

This introduces some interesting planning considerations for the riders since the race manual says that:

Ferries from Eceabat run around every 30 minutes from 06:00 until 00:00 and then at 02:00 and 04:00 and takes 25 minutes. Ferries from Kilitbahir run around every 30 minutes and take 15 minutes.

No ferry information is provided for the Gelibou -> Lapseki however I'm sure riders will have checked it out.

The race manual says:

For the first time we will have a ferry for the last meters of the race. The finish protocol is that riders arriving at the finish line together will be given the same time and their order of arrival will be recoded depending on the order of their arrival at the ferry port of departure. This will be validated by the tracker so once again take care that your tracker is on and functional to the end. In the event that tracking is not active on a rider then they may prove their arrival at the Ferry port by collecting a receipt at the port of departure. For example there are several ATM machines next to the ferry terminal in Eceabat where one can be obtained.
If a rider cannot prove their arrival time at the ferry port then they will be assumed to be the last to arrive for that sailing. Any rider who fails to navigate from the finish line to the Saat Kelusi with the other riders on that sailing will not be placed ahead of them in rankings regardless of ferry port arrival.

The actual finish line is at the Saat Kulesi monument in Çanakkale which appears to be just a few hundred metres from the ferry port so we can probably expect riders on the same ferry to roll in together (although I wonder how they define "riders arriving at the finish line together" :-) ). However there are some interesting possibilities if riders are close at the finish but opt for deferent ferry options.