Finally the forecast reported sun, OK winds, and hopefully good flying. We were in a good position to hike up mt Madelaine. At 800 meters this mountain is launchable in any direction.
I was early at the top but the clouds were still below, it probably needed some time to dry up from yesterday. So we decided to wait for better conditions. Wait and wait…
After too many hours waiting I decided to give it a go. No joy. Dead air. I glided southeast and landed high before hiking up another hill. Relaunched, still with a low cloudbase. I had some small thermals but they were really small and broken. I was right at the inversion layer and it was very obvious. Once again I had to land hillside and hike up again. Another try and I finally got some more altitude. Glided on track and was able to catch some weak lift, but not enough to jump over to more pronounced mountains. I was forced to land and continue walking the rest of the day. Frustrating!
I continued along the road and my team had parked the van on a small pass leading to TP2. Nice weather, great nature, and hopefully a flyable site for tomorrow morning. The idea was to be airborne early for a sweet glide.
Today was the day that we were supposed to move in the air,not on the ground. But my mistakes from the day before made it difficult. I was too far west and not at the higher ground I needed to be to take advantage of this day due to the strong inversion and humid air below. The race now split into two. The leading groups that were in position to fly well this day, and the rest who didn’t. Unfortunately I was in the latter group. Or maybe more precisely: I made too many errors the day before, and was not well enough updated on the forecast to take advantage of this day. But it’s difficult to be ahead of everything at all times. Last night we spent at a camping site where the owner was drunk. Really shitfaced. It took us a lot of time just to get settled, and there was no time to prepare well for today. Just a quick glance at the map and the general forecast. And again we didn’t get much sleep. Maybe two or three hours. The whole team was tired.
We finished this day being last in the competition. Not a good place to be. But as mentioned we made too many errors, and when making the first error it’s hard to get out of the loop. One mistake leads to another. We needed to reset!
This evening it was clear skies, and no thunderstorms, so I put up a tent to be able to sleep better. Very much needed! We found a beautiful place, made some food, and were able to get to rest quite early that evening.
