What a day (or did I say that yesterday???)
Today was the best flying day we have had so far, with real thermals originating from real thermal sources, nice cu’s popping overhead and not QUITE as dense airspace as yesterday.
Task was an 84 km thing back and forth in the local area around TO. We had a 6 km exit cylinder around TO, on towards the antenna at Divisa, then to Monarca over beyond the goal from the last few days and back to take launch as the last turnpoint before heading to Cerro Gordo for an end of speed section. From there it was a leisurely glide to goal in Valle, and you had to make the goal to get the speed points for the speed section.
Fastest pilots completed the course in something like 2h 20min, pretty good average considering the convergences never REALLY set up so we had to top up often, and also couldn’t go straight from Divisa to Monarca but had to come via Maguey instead.
Quite a few pilots suffered some very limited visibility due to fog at an altitude, will be interesting to see if anyone is penalised for this.
As far as I could tell Chrigel won the day, with several of his Advance team mates coming in together with him. I fear that Eric will have lost his lead today as he was some 7 minutes behind (I think) but results aren’t up yet so can’t know for sure. The Danish team had a glorious day today, all making goal within a minute of each other, and often actually taking turns leading the pack around during the course. I’m proud of my mates here, they are doing a great job. In total I’m guessing more than 100 pilots made it into goal, perfect tasksetting really since nobody likes landing out and there are simply more happy people around on such days.
I think Primoz was the fastest UP today, and sadly Olli landed somewhere along the line, so there are ups and downs on the team side of things. On my wing I was dismayed to discover that the right C-risers was all but worn through today (a grate on one of the trimmer purchase steel rings was eating away at the riser every time I pulled the trimmer down) so I have had to change risers tonight. The reserve set I had came off my old wing and weren’t 100% the same, which meant that I have been fixing for quite a few hours by now. While I was at it I (think I) fixed the left turn tendency, so with any luck I’ll be able to thermal both ways tomorrow, AND glide straight without leaning 15 degrees right all the time. Ahh the joys of comp wing ownership.
I have a feeling the results will get stirred through a bit today – who knows I may even be moving up the rankings a bit.
Oh and another thing – some genius on a Mantra insisted to glide wingtip to wingtip with me for 5-6ks in a turbulent headwind today, I got pretty annoyed with him after a while ’cos you don’t need much of an incident to be in each other’s lines when gliding that close. This was underscored a moment later when he was right above me and suffered a collapse – I had to all but stall to keep him off my canopy, and may have been swearing a trifle under my breath. Then again he probably thinks I was hanging too close!!!!
All for now – must really try to get some sleep,
Mads Syndergaard
