04 February 2009

Fast and lonely

Yesterday-s task 8 of the Paragliding Worlds called for 114 km of flying. The fastest pilots completed the approx. 100 km speed section in an incredible 2,5 hours!
I was still weak and decided not to use the early window opening and instead launched in the ordered way, that is late. Unfortunately conditions at launch were weak so the ordered launch took a long time and I was really late in the air. As a couple of other late launchers dropped out early I flew the whole day completely by myself with no help of any other pilots. In fact most of the time I didn't even see any others, not even in the distance, weird! Flying alone is much slower and after 4 hours and 75 km I was so tired I decided it safer to land.
Finnish team members Jouni and Ari came into goal, again around 30-40 place, some 20 minutes behind the leaders.

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