Monday, April 17, 2006

Quest Day 1

the weather forecast is not great with winds from the west up to 15 mph and blue sky's with max altitude of 4,500 ft. I get nominated for the task comittee with davis and Glen volk, given the forecast and airspace regulations we are faced to make a cross wind task of 102kms just over our nominal distance that was set by a unknown person. I knew that if we did not start early we would have no chance at making the task but unfortunately there was no one else that wanted to start at 1:30pm or that was in position to start. I did not want to go by myself cause that would have been very stupid given the conditions and the high risk chance of landing or getting caught up by the gaggle. I saw two more start gates go by before we started at 2:15pm and I was on top with Oleg and Brett. We headed for the first turnpoint and I got a little in front did the turnpoint and headed back into the strong cross headwind. I got really low and probably should have landed but there must have been someone else helping me out from way above the clouds. As I drift low across the lakes that make up florida I am slowly climbing but losing ground rapidly, but hey I am still in the air and have a chance at winning still. We had about 25-30kms cross-headwind to battle for like 65kms, I caught back up to Oleg and Brett among others. We played lets head but the wall for the next 3 hours before finally getting shut down by the see breeze and all landed about 9kms from the 2nd turnpoint. Oleg, Brett a nd Bruno will come equal 1st, I ended up 8th for the day about 1 km behind them but only 6 points separting us.