Tuesday update

Today's task was an AAT after 4 (?) days of racing tasks. The weather was predicted to be tricky with cells of storms over the task area and a stormy change later in the afternoon. The change didn't really happen (yet?) but there was showers, some small cells and overdeveloped, gloomy skies at times. When you add the weather, airspace and the terrain and overlay the task it makes your route planning very tricky. I actually felt like we did a good job of it and managed to dodge major trouble but yet again ended up slow. I wasn't able to stay really high today and whenever I start having to find climbs with rocks and trees around me I end up losing and wasting time. Final glide was interesting today, Allan and I were about 400ft low and scratching around in 2 knots for a while, Allan decided to search upwind along a cloud street (somewhat overdeveloped) and called good air. I following and we both cruised along under a long line of lift to pick up over 1000ft of glide; nice! Coming in from the north is particularly fun as you need about +400ft to get over the final ridge 15km from home, once clear of the ridge you have plenty of glide and can bring the speed up, you'd have to try hard to get it wrong from there.

It's pretty hot here, been 34 degrees the last few days, the Pommy captain ended up in hospital with exhaustion yesterday.

Anyway, 4 more comp days and I'm really going to make the most of them. Team's getting along fine, last night was international party where all the teams set up a table with exotic booze and nibblies. I made sure Graham tasted most of the booze. Lots of fun, as well the Slovaks put on some entertainment including fire twirling and a performing dog. We had Australian wines, music, peanuts (of dubious Aussie origin) and bread and dipping oil. The 2 corked hats got a workout.

with regards,

Mike