A nice sunny day forecast and this promised good conditions at Santa Brigida for our first flight of the year. However, Johnny had also promised us that if he was going to do another base jump, he’d let us know so we could go and watch. Co-ordinating the flying with the watching turned into a bit of a headache, so we went to Santa Brigida first and Geoff flew and got a good thermal;  Nicky and I got ready and predictably, as soon as we had the gliders unpacked and ready to clip in, Johnny’s phone call came. We’re usually the last to leave the site, so people were a little perplexed when we all started packing up our gear as fast as possible, without having flown, and then making some fairly crap excuse as to why we were going.

We grabbed Marc on the way past the landing field and headed off to the dam up the road to meet John and Johnny. It’s 135m high and enough for a 2 second jump, before the chute is released. The build up was pretty exciting, watching Johnny get ready and then waiting for all the tourists to disappear, so he could jump without anyone calling the cops. The jump was amazing.

Here’s the clean version of the video.

Here’s the video with commentary (don’t watch if you’re offended by swearing)

After resounding applause, we rushed back to Santa Brigida, leaving John to collect Johnny.

The conditions had mellowed a lot, but we still all got nice flights, although it did get a little crowded at times, with lots of others coming out for the first flight of the year. In the end, it was a really lovely day and a nice mix of excitement and chill out boating about. And we got to say good-bye to Nicky before she goes off to Colombia for a month tomorrow. Hope the flooding subsides!

See photos of today.

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