“Stay away from the clouds” – that’s what I told my mentees. It looked like it was going to be a strong day. At just 11AM, there was already impressive vertical development in the sky. Today’s task was a 1:40 exit cylinder start at Woodrat Launch then a long into wind leg to Mt. Isabella -> Cemetary turnpoint -> Dark Hollow – > Donato’s goal = a 39km task.
I began the race 1,000’ above the LZ climbing in 100 ft/min. lift at the start. Not quite where you want to be. Meanwhile, my buddies were all at cloudbase and on there way to the first turnpoint. I struggled for about 15 minutes until I was able to get to 4,000. One advantage of having 100 gliders in front of you is that you can see exactly what the air was doing and where the lift was. It became clear that the windward side of Rabies Ridge was where you wanted to be. The crux was getting to it. Even on ½ speedbar my groundspeed was in the single digits. However once there, myself and a few others were rewarded with a continuous lift line to Mt. Isabella. Tagging the cylinder and onto the next turnpoint I found a riper of 1,600 fpm and made 2 circles that took me to cloudbase. Once there, I found a lift line that kept me at base and direct to Cemetery with a 65km groundspeed at ½ bar. I met up with Justin Elliot, Conrad Kriek and Frank Hernandez there. We made some turns in a slow climb to cloudabase and I watched my final glide to goal drop from 11:1 to 8:1. I departed the thermal and hit the bar. Conrad took a slightly different line than me out towards the valley. I was at base and getting slammed around so I had to come off speed for a while. Paul Murdoch came in low from the west and Conrad came in from the East and the 3 of race raced for goal. It was damn good fun!
On a side note, we had team scoring this year. A high five for my fellow team mates – Rob Hecker, Jim Hull and Sandy Coleman. On the last day all four of us made goal. Way to go boys.
Here are today’s top 5.
| # | Id | Name | Nat | Glider | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 15 | Jack Brown | M | USA | Ozone R 10.2 | |||||||||||
| 2 | 73 | Paul Murdoch | M | USA | Niviuk Icepeak 3 | |||||||||||
| 3 | 61 | Conrad Kreick | M | USA | Ozone Mantra M3 | |||||||||||
| 4 | 31 | Jeff Farrell | M | USA | Gin Boomerang GTO | |||||||||||
| 5 | 24 | Cliff Curry | M | USA | Ozone Mantra R10 | |||||||||||
| 5 | 29 | Justin Elliott R | M | USA | Mercury 2009 |
