British Open - Day Six

All of my flights at this comp have involved taking off late and flying by myself. This isn’t a sensible competitive strategy so today I decided I would launch early and try to fly with as many people as possible. But the best laid plans…

I don’t like hanging around on launch; I give myself plenty of time to get ready but not so much that I fry in the sun. Today, they brought everything forward an hour and this meant I launched around the middle of the pack. Plenty of lift off launch, but I struggled to get established on the main ridge; most of the pilots resorted to ridge soaring to wait for a decent thermal, but I didn’t fancy that. I headed out and joined a smaller, later group climbing up; we got established on the ridge no problem, but I was back to square one, missing the start and flying with a handful of pilots at the back of the group.

Tagged the first two turnpoints; just as I went for the second one, I saw a pilot just ahead of me tag it and climb in a thermal. After the turnpoint, I went to join him but he was already well above me and either the thermal was above me too or I just failed to find it. I still had plenty of altitude and headed for the next TP, passing over whatever triggers I could see. I never really got any lift and passed maybe 800 ft over goal; the air was pretty boaty and I kept going but shortly after goal I hit big sink. So I came back to goal, hoping to either get lift or to land.

Goal is at a col (a pass between two valley systems) and is often an area of convergence; it can be pretty messy in the afternoon. On the first day one competitor had a low level collapse, a cascade and hit the deck – his injuries weren’t as bad as initially feared but his competition ended there. I was finding some nice lift and very slowly climbing – maybe 400ft from the ground – when I hit the thermal from hell – strong, tiny and sharp edged. If I’d had another few hundred feet of ground clearance I would have taken it, but instead I snuck away. I decided to land S of goal and found a nice field maybe 1 km away.

After I had packed up my wing etc, I found my gloves had disappeared. I searched everywhere, unpacking my wing, flight suit, flight deck, helmet, looking inside my camelback. There are very few credible explanations for what happened (e.g. did a rabbit / marmot / bird take them for their burrow / den / nest?) – I’d really like to know where they are now! If you see a bird / marmot / rabbit wearing OR gloves let me know.

Tracklog -> http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/253650

Pics -> http://picasaweb.google.com/DMMullin/Montclar21August#