Judith's blog

We had an elapsed time race over three turnpoints. The wind was north when we got to the site and a task was set to the south. First turnpoint was at the lower north launch, then Col St Jean, across to the highest point of the ridge just to the south of Chabre and then landing in Ribiers. To make the launch more manageable with 120 pilots they split the field and all 1 and 1-2 gliders had to go to the lower launch. 2 and 2-3 gliders could launch from the top or elect to the go to the lower launch too. The trade off for the extra hassle for the 1s and 1-2s was that you got the turn point without having to fly to it. I chose to drive to the turn point. This was based on a tactical decision. The sky was looking better to the west; I didn’t want to fly the extra 3 km there and back and I didn’t want to have the oncoming traffic of people launching from the north as well as the 2s and 2-3s who were having to fly there and back. This meant having to pack up my gear and obviously this interrupted my flow. When I got to the bottom N take off I realised I had left my flight deck and instruments behind. What a plonker! Wendy the retrieve driver took me back up and I raced back to launch. Because we were launching one at a time, this meant I was way down the queue, but the sky wasn’t working that well and there seemed less rush.

People were launching well and fast and the queue went down quickly. Some people were struggling in the valley and a few people went down. I was determined to stay up, and Dennis’ advice had been to stay high, rather than flying into the valley. I scratched along the cliff as closely as I dared. It’s a 1000m sheer vertical cliff, so it was pretty intimidating. I was in sink when an Atos came along, flew out and started circling. I waited for the thermal to come to me and we climbed up together (although he climbed much faster than me). I got 2000′ ATO and went on a glide to the second turn point. This was 11.5km away. My aim was to make sure I got to goal, so I flew conservatively, topping up in thermals and not letting myself get too low after glides. There was a great cloud street all along the ridge which you could cruise along and I skipped along towards the turn point.

At one point I did get low on the ridge, but I could see others in a thermal, so flew over to them. There were about 16 of us in the lift and it was very disorganised. One pilot kept turning inside me pushing me out of the core and another was testing Jocky’s theory of trying to find the core by flying straight, then turning, flying straight, etc. Not helpful when there are 15 others trying to 360. Luckily several cores developed and I thermalled away from the others. I set off on the glide again and could see others ahead of me on big ears trying to stay out of the cloud. I decided to try out the tactic of the first day and glided under the cloud getting lift all the way. It was very strong lift and although I was on speed bar, I was going to get sucked in, so I had to fly out of the side into clear air and then dived back under the back end of it. I was at cloudbase at that point which was 2500m AMSL.

Just as I came out of the other side of the cloud they changed the level of the day to a 2 (caution) so I went into racing mode to get as much distance as possible before the task was stopped. I kicked on the bar and flew through thermals without turning and got the second turn point, then set off for the third. I got 1km on the course and could see the massive cunimb to the south of the third turn point and they stopped the task at that point.

I regretted not flying the task on day one, just for the experience, but there was no way I was going to complete the task today with the sky as it was, so I flew down to a big valley. I was having trouble getting down as there was lift everywhere, and there was a strong valley wind, but I landed fine, next to a French guy who had flown there from Sederon and who wasn’t in the comp. They gave me a lift to the next village and there were already loads of pilots there. We found a bar, but it was closed! As we were sitting there it started raining, so the organisers stopped the task at exactly the right time.

I did 12.8km (approx.) and came 64th in the task, so my placing of 60th overall hasn’t changed. Gillian flew a blinder and came second woman yesterday. She’s doing really well. Ruth is flying brilliantly too. Both of them got to goal, unfortunately after the task was stopped. Conditions were pretty rough at times, but my glider behaved impeccably, which I found very reassuring.

In the evening we were invited to a BBQ with Gavin Foster and his team and I mentioned that it was my birthday. They toasted my health and that was it, until dessert, when they got out a cake and candles and I got a card they had all signed. I was really touched! We went back for bubbly in landing field and ended up with the southern lads who were celebrating Johnny’s birthday. I got far to drunk, but Phil and Jeff got me back to the caravan ok. It turned out there were 4 of us who had birthdays and Jocky made everyone at the briefing sing Happy Birthday to us – very embarrassing.

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