Plan Fait, Annecy.Completely overcast skies this morning, so we had a leisurely start and then headed to Plan Fait. Despite nearly being clagged in, people were flying and maintaining. We drove up and the sky started to brighten and we set up. Geoff launched and climbed up. I got ready, built a wall, pulled the glider up to check and it all seemed fine. As soon as I was off the hill, I pulled my left brake and felt a lot of resistance. On looking up, I had a big knot at the top of the breakline, which seemed to get worse as I tugged it. The back tip was pulled in, and I had to fly one hand up above my head and the other down by my shoulder to maintain straight flight. Not good, so I decided to fly straight down. I tried a left hand turn, but I whipped round, so decided not to do that again and planned my approach accordingly. When I landed the sky started to really break up and they were thermalling up and having a blast. I resisted the temptation to go into a mega sulk and packed up quick in the hope of getting a lift straight back up. Unfortunately, everyone was already up, so no chance of a lift. I met Sean from Chamonix, who was also hoping for a lift and together we hitched, but no one would stop. In the end (an hour and a half after I landed) we got a lift but by this time it was a lot windier on top. I decided to wait while Geoff drove the van down. Lots of people flew, but it seemed gusty and off to me and I just wanted a nice flight. In the end, the wind started coming from the north and sometimes over the back and the locals decided to drive down, so I joined them. I was gutted to have missed the best of the day, but have only myself to blame. Better preflight checking tomorrow!

Geoff writes: I had a great flight. I flew for an hour and a half and it was cloudy but still thermic. When the sun started to come out it got even better. It was easy to get high, but you couldn’t let yourself get too high because the cloud was still relatively low. I landed to have a break and to have something to eat, planning to go up again later, assuming that the sun would come out properly. But it just clouded over again.

See photos of today.

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