21 Juli 2010

Task 8: 76 km around 7 turnpoints
















Today Im writing blog from Regina´s computer, as my Mac´s screen froze when I wanted to start Word, I had to shut it down, but now it doesn´t boot anymore. Is there a virus around? Sorry that I can´t upload the photos from today, I have to find a way to do that later.
It didn´t look like a promising day today on launch. Strong wind crossing in, clouds of every kind (cirrus, castellanus, stratus, altocu´s, normal cu´s, lenticular and in the evening looking like cb´s were around. The cu´s base was low, and I was quite nervous and concerned to take off in these conditions. Some launches looked very marginal, Primoz was close to touching the ground, and Julia stalled the glider out and just got out with a lot of luck.
When I decided to try, a push was on, and sure enough, the wind was crossing at a speed of about 35 km/h... but the guys saw that it wasn´t safe and they closed the window for a couple of minutes. After that it slightly calmed down, and I had a good, safe take off and went along the ridge. Barely 15 minutes before the first startgate in the air (there were 3 with 20 minutes apart), I just managed to get up (as base was only a few hundred meters above take off anyway), over to the start circle, and then I went out on course.
I had quite a large crowd with me, and we flew the next 3 turnpoints together. I lost some of them going into the flatlands turnpoint, but then Oli called me over to the mountain ridge again, and we went on final together. Sure, with a crosswind of up to 35 km/h, he was faster in goal than me, but I was happy to score for our team again. The other guys landed at the 5th turnpoint when they got too low and into the strong valley breeze.
Christian Ciech (ITA) won the day a few seconds ahead of Tom Weissenberger, the Austrian and the Italian team are pretty close now. Gerolf arrived 17 minutes after Tom, but will be able to hold his first place overall. Fastest woman today was Kathleen Rigg ahead of me and Julia.
Looks like we might see some rain here the next couple of days, but then you never know. I didn´t really believe in a complete task today, let alone in getting to goal ;)

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