WCPC – Race Day 2

More thunderstorms were forecast for today and the task committee would have to work hard to try and get a task in. Today the sky was overcast most of the time and you could see the large CuNums rolling in from the North West and South West. It forecast to overdevelop earlier than usual so we were all told to be on our toes as the race may be stopped mid flight.

Today my DodgyFly powered up fine and all waypoints were in tact. That was good news for once. A 42km task was set of Woodrat-Bald-H-Rabies-JacksonvilleLZ. Basically a straight line out  Northwest and back. Problem would be getting over to Rabies from launch.

Launch windows opened at 12:30 with race starting at 1:30. The Wind dummies launched about 12:15 and actually started to do pretty well. By 12:45 there were quite a few gliders in the air. Again today I decided to launch later against all the newbie rules of getting out there first, but the thought of flying for an hour before launch in light thermals wasn’t much to entice. I launched at 1:11 and within 12 minutes I had joined the start gaggle which had topped out at around 5200ft, just 1400 ft over launch. The gate opened and we were off. I saw everyone leave and decide to follow suit. The transition across the valley is always the toughest here. It is much better to leave around 2k over launch but given the conditions I thought better thermals may be found across the valley. Not so. At least for me. I got to rabies ridge quite low down and only had a short time of fishing before I got too low and had to head to the LZ. Total flight time of about 32 minutes today. However, there were many comp pilots and others who sunk out too. Those who did make the ridge fought hard for over an hour before eventually managing to get up. Even Matt Cone bless himself fought to the end and flew for almost 2 hours making pretty patterns in the sky. His wife Stephanie on the telephone later after looking at his track asked that maybe next time he draw some hearts for her! :-)

Eventually a bunch of folks managed to get up on to Rabies ridge and head off to the first waypoint but the skies had now become a little ominous with massive CuNums starting to roll into the valley and the weather up North West looking black and ominous. Reports came in that Matt Farmer made goal (the only one) but that the race was stooped at 3:15 as there was rain on the course. People started landing out. Eric Reed landed safely in a tree about 1k short of goal trying to squeeze to the finish. Roger landed way out on Sugar Loaf. Better safe than sorry.

I felt pretty happy with myself overall. It was a better day of flying than yesterday. I got up and joined the start gaggle made the transition but sunk out with some of the best around. All in 32 minutes! Minimal distance points with minimal effort as opposed to minimal distance points with maximum effort and putting myself in risk.

All in all a happy sort of day!