Monarca 2010 – Task 1 65Km – Maguey, Divisa, Santa Maria, Quintella, Inglesi, Lake

 

Update: Looks like I jumped the start after all as they only gave me minimal distance. Ah Well.

My Flight is posted on Leonardo if you want to see it in Google earth or have a look at the video of today’s flight below.

So on to today’s task!

Not a bad day for flying for me. Again another high pressure day with the height capped around 9500ft so a lot of scratching to be had. At least by me! It was a bit of a shambles at the start today though for everyone. We hadn’t been given our ID cards last night so we got them today, or should I say, we had to find them today! They dropped the entire 135 or so ID cards under a tent and you had to look for yours – a Mexican Scramble. Then they wanted us to stick numbers on our wings so that took a bit of time too. They had no PA system to announce any changes to tasks being made so you had to be on your toes. I actually missed the change that the start was moved to 1:20. As it turned out I was lucky this year since it took me some time to get on top of the Mesa and I made the start gate which was a 3km entry cylinder around Maguey.

I had programmed my Garmin and the Digifly and once again the Digifly became the Dodgifly as it lost all the comp waypoints as I stood in line. However, this year rather than get stressed about it I just decided to use the Garmin. Since I have flown here before its reasonably easy now to fly the route (or as much as I can) since I know where the waypoints are.

I got reasonable high over launch and made for the Penon but I got a lot of sink on the way out so I came back to launch and tanked up. Went back out again and same thing happened. On the 3rd attempt I just kept pushing and got to the wall really low down on the spines, like 75 feet or so. I worked the ridge lift on the spines and eventually made it up to the side of the wall. There were a few other gliders not making much gain so I took a different path and was lucky to find a thermal that took me to the top of the wall for the first time since I got here. By this time the main gaggle was already established over crazy thermal and waiting for the start. I managed to get up on to Mesa and then got boosted enough to take me over to the crazy thermal too. The main gaggle still hadn’t gained much and I quickly joined them at the top. It was well after 1:00pm (what I thought was the start time!) so I headed straight off to Maguey wondering why they were waiting. I assumed that it was because they were waiting to get more height. It was because the start was pushed out to 1:20 and with a 3km entry cylinder, the were probably waiting until 1:20. With ignorant bliss I set off across the valley and arrived at Maguey low as expected.  I remember surfing the ridge line last year and started to do the same again. I caught a very light thermal and started gaining more height. By this time the rest of the main gaggle had transitioned across the valley and were coming in my direction. Thinking they would see me climbing slowly I expected them to move to the side and let me continue climbing. Nope! Some dumbass comes straight at me and never flinched and I had to move out the way for him during the turn that took me out of the lift. With the main gaggle now surfing the ridge too I joined them. However they managed to keep a better line and got a little higher by staying on the mesa. I surfed my way as far as I could and started looking for thermals to take my up. There were some but not that strong. I pushed out into the spines below and managed to catch one that took me back up to the edge of the mesa. By this time the 2nd gaggle were arriving and once again another yoyo pushed me out of my climb and I sank back below the ridge level. By this time I was close to Divisa but I knew I wouldn’t make it. So I ventured back down to the spines where I got lift before but this time it was all sink so I decided that I would just fly down to Santa Maria and land and get a retrieval from there. And that all went well. I did have a problem getting down though! it was very buoyant and very windy down there and I heard someone landed hard and had to get some medical attention. As it turned out. A lot of pilots who tagged Divisa sunk out at Santa Maria too. So all in all I was pretty happy with my flying today. The Dodgifly is another story!