PWC Roldanillo Day 3

Today was a good day for me! Flew pretty well the first few days but today was a day when many things came together. It was a full on race day with beautiful cummies, lots of birds, light winds and pretty much a perfect PWC race to goal. I didn't start so well, but quickly started to execute my plan which was to stay in the mountains for the first half of the race while it was still early, and then take a straight line down the center of the valley to the goal. You know what? After reading through this before I post, I must admit, that I had a perfect start, because I just positioned myself so that all I had to do was dart out into the valley start cylinder, and then right back into the terrain, which put me instantly in a position to get in front. When I say I didn't start so well, I guess what I mean is that the majority of top pilots were starting out in the valley, and were much higher than I at the start..... Shame on my (sorry Bill!) for letting my visual sight picture get in the way of what was really happening!

They mixed things up a bit today in terms of the task call. Goal was an airport at the center of a 15k cylinder. You first had to tag the goal waypoint, and then fly the 15k outbound so that you were completely outside of the cylinder. Then reverse course again and race the 15k back to goal.

I hooked up with X PWC champ Yasson Savov now sponsored by GIN early on and we raced the entire race together. It was great to get up to cloud base and just keep hammering the speed bar losing very little altitude and only stopping to climb in the strongest cores (usually marked by a gaggle of Colombian vultures). The vast majority of pilots had headed out to the valley early for the start, and were having a good go of it out there, but they just couldn't compete with the stronger and more frequent cores we had in the mountains. There were 4 of us at one point, but one (another R10.2) took a big frontal whack and by the time he recovered he had lost much altitude and never caught us back up. I'm not sure who the other pilot was but his glider seemed not to be able to keep up. Yasson is flying the 2 liner Boom proto and it's going quite well, definitely on even par with the R10.

Russ Ogden, flying his glow in the dark R11 proto, was just a thermal behind for almost the entire race, but never saw us out in front of him. He thought he'd won the day and was surprised to see Yasson and me at goal when he arrived!

Colombia has been really enjoyable again this year. Beautiful people, great flying, great birds to thermal with, good food (nobody gets the stomach grunge here that I'm aware of) and spectacular flying scenery. Also something that I really enjoy here is that the local flying community and locals themselves don't come looking for $ for every little thing like they do in Valle de Bravo. It's very refreshing (although I did pay a farmer after one of his trees was seriously pruned getting my glider out last week!) I also pay 2000 pesos to have my glider hiked up the hill for me, but I feel this is fare pay for a bit of hard work....

I hope I can be consistent and keep up the good pace here. On a day like today, there is absolutely no room for even one mental lapse or mistake.... These pilots are that good.... I kept the pace up strongly until the end, and had put myself in position to get the win. I was well above Yasson in the last climb, and left when my Cpilot said I would arrive at goal with 50 meters. The Flytec said 200 feet over and an 8.5 to 1 glide. It really looked good so I left and of course, immediately get the worst drilling of the day. I thought it would be a sure thing to find at least something to help me along the way, but I got low enough that I chickened out, and just didn't believe that I could make it. I found a small thermal and stopped for a few turns, and of course Yasson was right there and beat me in by 44 seconds. As soon as I left my little thermal, I flew into a monster climb with birds climbing everywhere! I just got tunnel vision and lost my situational awareness for just a moment. It would have been a no brainer if I had just believed and been confident to the end..... I'm getting the best training I could possibly hope for here with this great field of pilots and great flying conditions....