We woke up to lots of high cloud, but I was pretty sure it was going to burn off. The organisation’s greater concern was the forecast of strengthening westerly wind. They got us up the mountain early and set the start in the valley at the east end of the ridge, then back to launch and then over the back. Conditions looked weak before the start, and windy-dummy John was struggling to maintain at times. As soon as we got into the launch queue the wind picked up, but people got off ok and there were no long delays to wait for lulls. We had 45 minutes to race start, which was 7km away, so you had to work out the tactics of how to spend that time. Go straight to the end of the ridge (not hard with a tail wind, but lots of sink around), or stick to ridge soaring the westerly facing bits of the ridge and then work your way along until nearer the race start time.

It wasn’t very lifty, but I was maintaining well close to launch. However, this meant I was in the path of all the people launching behind me. As I was heading east (with the ridge on my left), I got pushed along by a pilot, since she was flying on my outside and I couldn’t turn out. She pushed me right along to an easterly facing bit and we slid down to the lower ridge. There it got really hard to stay up and we ended up in a gaggle of six. There was a perma-thermal there, but very light. I knew if there was constant lift it was a good trigger point, I just needed to wait for the big release. So I went into patient mode. I circled and circled, topping up in ridge lift from time to time and waited until I got my chance. Others decided to try somewhere else and got drilled, or went on low glides along the lower ridge. I eventually got enough height to fall back onto the higher ridge and then scratched my way on to the top of it. It’s quite intimidating when you are flying wingtip to the rock. It’s quite a big ridge!

I soared all the way to the end of the ridge while those under me didn’t make it up, and then topped up in a weak thermal and headed for turn point one. I lost too much height flying across the valley to get the turn point and couldn’t return to the ridge before getting drilled, flying into a head wind. Lots and lots of people got minimum distance today and I did reasonably well to get 8.2km. Conditions improved dramatically half an hour later, with cumulus and good height gains to be had.

The tactic today was to stay on the ridge until the conditions improved, and then set off on the task, like Laurie and Jess did. But you needed a lot of patience to do that. There just wasn’t enough strong sun until later. However, it did blow out on take-off within half an hour of the window opening, so it was a good decision to get us off. I wouldn’t be a meet director – you’re constantly between a rock and a hard place.

Results are Laurie Genovese 1st, Natalie Fresne 2nd and Kio Pujol 3rd. I’m 12th in the task and overall. Laurie Genovese is now leading the comp before Kirsty Cameron. Our team dropped from first to second place.

We’re off to do some star gazing at the local observatory tonight.

Update 24/8/10: Kio arrived late at launch and was a little hung over. It’s a comp tactic that worked for her. She was in the air when it got good!

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