British Champs Task 5: a really exciting 57k race to goal around a valley-based cats cradle followed by a dash over the back to the lake. We were due to fly to Castajon today and got our GPSs loaded up with a lovely 127k task but the sky started making pretty patterns right up the course line and eventually blocked the sun for a good hour, massively affecting thermal predictions so the task was changed. We also had the forecast of cunims later on over Castajon and Organya, so the new course took a mid-line in between both. Extremely well planned by the task cttee! After take off, we got tossed around in a washing machine for an hour before the start gate, with a strong inversion playing us off each other like pin pong balls on elastic. In fact, if youve ever played the arcade game where you have to blow ping long balls up a pipe, thats exactly what it looked like and you just had to check the pilot above you was lined up in the same pipe so as not to collide! The pilots only metres away of course were exploring the down pipe at high speed, so it was all rather buttock-clenching. Apart from the odd panicked pilot who cut through the throng crying for his mummy, the standard of thermalling these pipe-shaped bullets was high and almost everyone was watching out for each other constantly which was a big relief. So I played a blinder on the start gate today, managing to exactly match the countdown with my distance to the cylinder edge. It was a complete fluke - Ive been trying to do this all week and failing miserably but somehow today I was on it. However, always easier said than done - just as the time ticked over to 14.29-14.30, I realised that I had already reached the edge of the cylinder a couple of seconds too soon. As I turned around to go back in, I was mobbed by a sea of gliders chasing the leader and had to pull right out to the side to avoid collusion. By the time I was exiting the start gate again I was at least half way back in the field but - luckily - found a slightly more lifty line than the leaders. I scooted at my newly found optimum glide speed and caught up with the 2nd gaggle as it was rising from below on the ridge by the gorge. Up we went until we had enough height to cross the gorge and get up on the other side. Interestingly, the lead gaggle went along the front ridge despite it not producing such reliable thermals as the back ridge, and amazingly pushed on and on without a climb to get the 1st TP on the east end of the ridge. Our 2nd gaggle spread out in a superb display of confusion, some chasing the leaders along the valley, others going along the front ridge and a few of us terribly sensible pilots flying between front and back ridge to keep our options open. Some even went over the back, presumably in the hope of a lee-sider. Not that we we were being indecisive or anything. We were rewarded with a ping back up to 2300m which we hung on to until 2k from TP1 to ensure having a good thermal to return to. However, we returned into wind and had to work hard to find it again. I decided not to mince around and headed over to the back ridge, lower than the top, to soar up and wait for my ping, which I duly found over the back and held my breath as I screamed up to 2,500m. During this transition, something very exciting happened. As the 2nd gaggle had made its way to TP1, we realised that some of the leaders were still grovelling around in the valley, suddenly in not so much of a rush at tree height. We leap frogged them (I actually whooped having made such a stupid error at the start and then caught them up), got the TP but then lost our advantage as they found a screamer actually over the TP after we had already left to fly back along the ridge. They took this much higher than us and then somehow managed to leapfrog us back again as we minced up the back ridge waiting for our ping. We werent looking so smug then!! I have to hand it to the leaders for such an amazing display of speed and decisive derring-do. After that, the race was all to play for. I made a mistake and turned too wide in our thermal, putting my wing in some serious sink. Catching up withy posse was almost impossible as they were climbing at 3.5m/s. The thermal then got weaker as the strong core disappeared above me and I decided to hop over the back in hope of a lee-sider, which I got and recovered my height, now being a few K behind Steve Eth and the likes who were now pipping TP2. I marked the spot, zoomed across the valley to bag TP2, then zoomed back to my spot and, for once, the thermal was still there. Amazingly, I managed to catch up with the crew by staying in the strongest core and getting back up to their height as they strolled over the back of the ridge. The really special moment was that a large mountain vulture thermalled with me for a good five mins and came really close, him looking at me and me looking at him. We were definitely in awe of each other! I got a couple of photos but the wide-angle lens didnt do him justice unfortunately. What a treat though! We had completed the cats cradle and were now on full Glide to bag the last two TPs and ice-cream at the lake. However, the suspense increased as we watched the leaders, a few k in front, get lower and lower without finding any lift. Some kind of miraculous happening made a cloud grow right above the penultimate TP and hoofed us in gaggle 2.3 back up to a decent height for the final 15k valley crossing. We took it with both hands and then pursued the leaders who had now got a much bigger jump on us but were by no means home dry. I pushed ahead if the gaggle as I saw one if the leaders thermalling from low down but, as usual, it was weak and mincy by the time I arrived. I still had 7k to go and my FlyMaster was telling me I only needed a 6-1 glide to goal now, but it hadnt quite registered that there was one final mountain in the way. I really couldnt believe my instrument at this moment. Nevertheless, I flew straight at the mountain with the hope of finding a thermal source somewhere along it, and sank, and sank, and sank, until I was way below the top. I held my Nerve and kept going - lots of the team were gaining ground on me and at a better height having sensibly stopped to top. I hugged in to the terrain and sneaked through a saddle over the back. Then whoopy-do, a lee-sider kicked in and the air just got a whole lot more bouyant. I took one turn, convinced that my now 5-1 L/D reading was fibbing but then decided to mash the bar and go for it. The ground dropped away and I hit the end of speed section in no time at all, followed by the pleasant cascading tone informing me I was in goal. I took 2hrs, which wasnt brilliantly fast for that course but most of the earlier section was cross-wind and Im still struggling with my rather flimsy speed bar tape to get my foot comfortably in the right place so as not to cause the wing to be assymetrical at 80mph which makes control on the rear risers quite heavy going! Anyway, Ill sort that out one later. For now, the joy of spiralling down to land on a beautiful beach, then to swim in a gorgeous lake, and eat a well-earned ice-cream is enough to keep me happy for days to come! By the way, I think well over half the field got to Goal and all before the cunims were anything like as spectacular as they are now. Good flying comp peeps! I got some amazing photos of the start gate today but only realised 30mins into the task that I hadnt got the wifi switched on the remote (which hangs on my rear handle so I can click the remote without taking hands off brakes) so in fact I had got nothing. Doh! All a learning curve.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 18:03:05 +0000
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