Wil's First Task

Just got back to the casa. Riss, Bill Hughes, Glen from Oregon not sure of his last name, Me and Dad are all staying in the Casa. Today was the first day of the comp and boy was it intense. The start is quite the strategic/balls to the wall event in a real competition. I had a good start as me pete and brad hooked a core that pushed us above most of the gaggle right before 12:45. I launched around 12 and it was my smoothest launch yet. I was only layed out for about five seconds before i was gone. the other days there's been a knot i spotted when building a wall or a twig or something.

Once in the air I climbed up pretty quick and dashed over to the pinon to start getting in position. After the start i watched the comp wings work their magic and pull away but I picked a good line to the next lift and was able to hang with the lead gaggle for a few more thermals. eventually we made it to davis (DA VEEZ). The task of the day was a 72 K flight in the shape of a figure eight/double triange. after making it to davis i pushed out towards the flats with several gliders in front of me. i began to get very conservative with my altitude and many pilots caught up. luckily i found a good core near the turnpoint and found a magic line to it and to help start my glide back towards the three kings. once there i found a good core but this mexican on a white boomerang pushed me out. took another two climbs and glides into a head wind to finally get to base. during that time at least twelve other pilots passed me >:( anyways i eventually had enough alititude to start working back towards the second to last turn point. about 2 K from the cyllander i was thermalling with Trey from SB and went a little bit downwind to find better lift. didn't find anything so i decided to tag the turn point, then started cruising back towards the lift. unfortunetely i was getting drilled by sink and the lower you get over the flats the harder it is to get up.

I had my garmin fully zoomed in so that i could see my track log. i found where i'd first caught the lift in the area and spend a lot of time flying around the area working hard for five turns to gain thirty meters, only to lose all of it by falling out of the weak lift for a few seconds. I was about five hundred feet over when something organized finally came through. first turn i gained a few meters, then five, then six, then eight, then lost two, then gained fifteen! it may have taken me twenty five minutes but i worked that sucker almost back to cloud base, then i pimped off this other guy to finish the climb.

Having decided that being low was going to end my flight i flew extremely slowly and deliberately worked every possible piece of lift to stay around base. eventually four of us made the last turn point and jetted towards goal. i made it with like two thousand feet to spare :). my time was 3:32 and the winner was around 2:30. I think I was the last one in. but what matters is that i made it. and it was my longest flight to date! Later i talked to trey and pete, the two other young americans on serial class gliders, and they both went down where i almost did. I've decided that consistancy is certainly the most important thing and now that i have much more time in the air to make decisions it should be a much easier goal then before.