21 August 2009

British Open at St. Jean, Task 4

After two cancelled days, today we had another great day of flying, and a 69 km task. The course was interesting with turnpoints in the valley, on the main ridge as well as on the Morgan at the other side of the lake.
Returning from the Morgan was probably to most crucial transition, quite many didn't get up when back in the St. Jean area, others had to use a lot of time.
For once I got this right, realising that high up the winds were north I used a good thermal in front of the Morgan to get up to 3400m and then glided quickly along a convergence line.

As in the days before the comp the line bend a bit, and in my favour. So I could fairly easily get to the next turnpoint in the valley again. There the sailplanes showed another thermal and after that it was quite straightforward to connect back to the ridge and fetch the southermost turnpoint. On the way back I tanked up height in the strongest thermals. In front was another cloudline but the upper winds had shaped the clouds into strange formations so I wasn't sure that would work. Actually it worked very well and I arrived over the last waypoint and goal with 1000m surplus altitude.
So could have finished 5-10 minutes earlier, now my time was 2:48, probably good for a 30-something place. Luc Armant once gain won the task, in 2:02, but today nr. 2 was only a couple of seconds behind. At the Morgan I was still "only" 3km behind those leaders, but they fly so fast that I have no way to keep up.

Update: results and my own track are now on-line.

1 comment:

Jean-luc said...

Thank's very much for taking the time of blogging :-).Info on what was hapening has been pretty scarce and your blog is an very good insight.
Keep up the good work , AND flying.
Cheers