Friday, June 12, 2009

Spanish Nationals Day 7

Well today was supposed to be the day of the comp so they set a 167kms task with 3 turnpoints.I launched first and climbed out with Pedro and Blay to 2200m. There was only 2 starts and I wanted to do the 1st one as there was 30 mins between them. The course was long and we had more wind than expected. I stuck to my plan and Led out the whole first 2 legs arriving at the 2nd turnpoint into convergence. This was the most fantastic part of the flight I got to 15,000ft and glided 25kms into the headwind before heading more on course line away from the convergence. This will be my mistake of the day. Pedro caught me up in the convergence and we flew together and scratched together the whole way. Blay eventually caught us then the rigid wings caught back up after not seeing them since the begining. Ako did the last start and by the time he got to the 2nd turpoint the convergence had moved closer again to course line and he followed it deep into the mountains and caught us at the last turnpoint. We all arrived there low apart from Blay who got stuck low behind us. I decided to head downwind away from goal as the grounnd was coming up and to the left the ground was going down. So I tried to give myself some height to get up but landed. Everyone else went right got very low and climbed out in a light thermal. I watched them for the next 45 mins over my head before they went on final for goal. It was quite frustrating knowing that I was the only one that landed out of the 5 of us, 2 being rigids. I then spent the next 4 hrs waiting for the car to turn up and finally got retrieved just after 11pm. Ako won the day pedro 2nd and Elloy 3rd only 3 in goal and I was next closest 20kms short.Blay landed about 10kms behind me, thats all for now as it is nearly 2:30am and I need some sleep so that I can do some more catching up. Here is todays video. He