I decided to fly on the last day and the main objective was to enjoy it. The forecast was for windier conditions and an evening flight looked unlikely, so I went up in the first bus and got ready. As we were setting up, wave bars started forming in the distance and I decided that I would fly until they got closer and then I would go down. I didn’t fancy flying in mountains with lots of lenticulars around.

The task was designed to keep us away from the wind and we had to go into wind to a start cylinder 3.5km away, then 20km north and zigzag a bit then back to the HQ. I took off 20 minutes after the window opened and spent the next 40 minutes getting high and trying to push forward. I headed out over the ridge in front but failed to clear it and had to head back to the launch ridge. It was turbulent in the lee, so I resolved to get a lot more height before my second attempt. I got a strong thermal and got to 2300m and cleared the ridge easily, although not without a little kicking. I lost a lot of height getting to the start, but managed to drop back onto the ridge, climb up and get back to the launch ridge to start making my way to the first turn point. I ridge soared to the end of the ridge, while Calvo called the conditions level 2 (caution). Adrian Thomas and Wagga had been calling 2 or 3 for a while, so I decided then that the task would soon be cancelled and I didn’t fancy being in the bottom of a windy valley or having to wait for a retrieve bus, so I about turned and headed back to St Andre. The task was cancelled 10 minutes after I landed.

The ironic thing was that I didn’t actually find it that rough or scary. I was flying around thinking that if this was how the other days had been, I shouldn’t have been so wimpy and just got on with the flying. However, when others landed they said it was the worst day of the lot, really turbulent and nasty (others reported nasty conditions further along the course line, so I think I didn’t fly far enough to get into the really rough stuff). It just goes to show how important not just your attitude is to a day, but also your feeling. You can be really up for a task and accept roughness, or be worried about the conditions and feel the turbulence as really threatening. Since I wasn’t bothered about the task, I flew as far as I wanted and as far as I enjoyed it and when faced with a bunch of valleys I didn’t think it was sensible to be in, I made the choice to fly away, so had a nice flight.

The flight (and stunning views) did make up for some of my negative views of the place and it’s clearly a great place to fly, but I’m not sure I’ll be back in a hurry for an all out racing comp – at least not without going there to do some free flying first. There are rumours of the Nats going back there next year and I think that would be a shame. For one thing I don’t think it’s good to go to the same venue in consecutive years and for another, given that nearly 10% of the competitors had incidents, it might be good to have a more relaxed venue to attract a wider field of competitiors – the Nats are not just for the big boys after all.

Prize giving was fun and great to see Kirsty second overall in serial class, and local boy Neil Roberts second in the champs. And of course well done to Craig and Wagga as well.

The dancing went on into the small hours. And I had the great honour to be told to f*** off by Bob Drury who was the DJ. Apparently he doesn’t do requests!

See photos of today’s flying and prize giving.

Geoff writes: the final score – ten reserve deployments, one power line landing,  and at least two tree landings. And another incident I don’t know of – the competition organisers said there were 14 incidents in total. There were about 146 pilots, so about 10% of the pilots had serious incidents. That seems quite a high risk to me. Maybe it’s a reflection of the venue, maybe it’s the type of gliders people fly. Flying is always going to have an element of danger, there will always be accidents, and people don’t have to fly, they choose to do so, it’s their decision. But for me personally, a 10% chance of an accident like this is way, way too high!

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