04 März 2015

Day 1 and 2 World Championships

Sorry for the delay in reporting from the worlds, but my days start at 6.30 and don´t finish until 11pm, with quite a bit of flying excitement inbetween!
I have been voted into the safety committee, and Gerd is in the tasksetting, so we need to be at the meeting every morning at 8am already. Then we race back to go up to take off with our team at 9, rig the gliders, usually the pilots´ briefing is around 11.
Yesterday´s task, 109 km around 4 turnpoints, was quite difficult and took us close to the volcano. I was lucky three times when I got low and a friendly bird showed me the good lift. I was stoked to make goal and had a good landing at the nice Amanalco field. Even more stoked to hear that Gerd got to goal 2nd overall, and also Roland and Andre were already there!
Today the task was even longer, and harder too, with a stronger wind and not exactly many clouds. Still 18 pilots made it to goal. I gave up just before the last turnpoint in the north, as my option would have been to land at the turnpoint, the place furthest away from Valle, and not being picked up till after dark. Instead I landed at Amanalco together with Andre and Achim (they made the turnpoint!). Still we were only picked up after dark, because our driver concentrated on retrieving many other pilots in places that were harder to find than our field. After 3,5 hours of waiting and temperatures falling down below 10C, I was really glad when the French team offered us two spaces in their team car and took Andre and me back to Valle, while Achim and Trent were still waiting for a car to pick them up. It´s not just about the flying here, also the organization around the competition is quite a bit of an adventure!
Like I already did today (unsuccessfully) I will try again tomorrow to get a shorter task for the pilots, because I prefer to see more pilots happy and healthy in goal, rather than getting exhausted from long retrieve actions. Im not scared, but I also don´t fancy to be on my own in a place that is difficult to find after dark.

1 Kommentar:

Daniel Schneider hat gesagt…

Hallo Corinna, verfolge mit viel Freude die Berichterstattung auf der Dhv Seite ! Faszinierend auf was für einem level iht Euch Battled !! Grüsse an das ganze Team speziell an meinen Gutacher Freund Roland ! Go a Little harder or go home !! Daan