Geoff writes: the forecast was for a good sky, with strong winds early on, dropping off from mid afternoon. And that was almost what happened. The sky was good, but winds were gusty on the Long Mynd. The clouds seemed to form and decay quite quickly. One or two people launched before the BPC task was called, and Kai went XC. Later, we found he had chosen to land at 60km because it was very rough, almost certainly wave affected.

The task was called, 45.5km to Stourport on Severn. Whilst the wind was slowly dropping, the sky seemed to be getting worse, with lots of high cloud, and less and less sun, but people did start launching in the lulls, and getting away. It turned out to be better than the sky appeared, with nine people in goal in the end (Tony Spirling the winner, Richard Butterworth second; and Dave Thomas also made goal), and some longer distances done by the free flyers. Judith and I launched quite late, not really liking the strong winds, and I was one of the last to leave, doing most of my (short, 23 kilometre) flight alone. It was definitely a day for gaggle flying, and for patience, and whilst I had the patience, I didn’t have the gaggle. Probably I should have launched sooner. Judith did get high, but didn’t bother going because the sky downwind looked so poor, and ended up doing some tandems with Mick, whilst I was retrieved by Helen and Jean-Luc.

Strange day really, and actually a lot better than you would have guessed from the sky later on.

Oh, and I managed to leave my GPS on all night, so the tracklog wrapped and I lost my flight tracklog. Lucky it wasn’t a long flight then….

See photos of today.

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