Good day

Yesterday, day 2 we had a very challenging and technical flight that is worthy of world championship competition.

Grid time. Weather forecast was not great but the actual weather is worse. complete 8/8 cloud cover all around us. with the early morning cumulus spreading easily, no sun on the ground as far as we can see and with no wind for the first time in 2 weeks, the cloud cover persists.

Still, 12pm and we are launched with a task of 135 km. Very shortly after launch i am 10km away from the field and down to 1400 feet from launch height of 2400 feet. Between me and the airfield is a huge forest but with zero wind i recon i can get back if necessary.

Finally i find a very weak climb and stay with that. I meet up with Liz and we inch our way to the east where there is a little bit of sun. Finally climbing away to 3000 feet we are still 12 km away from the start line in the wrong direction. On task all we can see is shadow on the ground but the biggest problem is actually making a start through the start line.

We decide to wait. Finally at 2pm we see more sun on the ground, cloudbase up to 3800 feet, we make a long glide back towards the start line and cross it at 3000 feet.

As if on cue, three gliders appear just ahead of us, the French. And others appears as if from nowhere and so the order of the day is established...

The flight is very technical, with low cloudbase, almost complete cloudcover and few landing out fieds, we are having to make continuous tactical decisions much more then usual, there is no obvious route to take and at one point we go back south only then to go north via a wonderful cloudstreet.

At the street i find a fantstic 6kts climb and we get away from the chasing pack. It's great feeling seeing them milling around thousand of feet below. However, we lose the advantage at the second turn point where we go past the turn to a cloud that didnt give any climb at all.

So now at the last turnpoint we are all together again, but there are still advantages to take. We find a brilliant line of cloud going all the way home and we got on to it. This puts us on a fast final glide and into the mayhem of the controversial landing pattern at Arboga.

I am third on the day and now fourth overall. Liz is fifth for the day and 7th overall. The spread of the points is very small so anything can happen.

Today rain and typical UK weather, looks like a scrub. More blog later.