HGFA Skysailor Magazine

SKY SAILOR 5 March | April 2018 Day 2: Task 1 The weather for Day 2 looked far more promising: still quite strong winds out of the WSW, but no overdevelopment and a 9000ft cloudbase. With Day 1 nerves out of the way, it’s a little more relaxed before take off in the tow field. Our task today takes us north to Trangie, just to the west of Dubbo, for a 142.8km optimised race to goal with a later start again, to let some of yesterday’s bad weather clear the area. We expected a challenging crosswind for the first part of the flight, whith a change later on to a more predominant tailwind. All competitors got up and off and there was plenty of room in the 10km start radius. A large proportion of pilots took the first start at 15:00, but quite quickly, pilots took different routes on course line – some took a more direct route, keeping just left of course line, enough to battle the wind, while others pushed much harder into the crosswind to make the latter parts of the flight easier. First into goal was Atilla Bertok, followed closely by Ollie Chitty, both from the first clock and after taking the more direct route and not straying far from course line. It was 10 minutes before the next competitors arrived, Guy Hubbard chased by a pack of second starters (15:15), including Josh Woods, Steve Blenkinsop and Niki Longshore. Niki also took a decisive day win over the other women in the comp after being the only one to make goal. Day 3: Task 2 A switch in the wind brought us a steady northerly. This meant we’d see predominantly blue conditions early on and only 10kt of north wind in the boundary layer. With this forecast we were set a 185.7km race to goal via two turnpoints, finishing at Bookham, north-west of Canberra. Conditions were noticeably slower in the start cylinder, with climbs to only 7000ft. The first start clock came around, but only a few pilots at the top of the gaggle took the plunge – everyone else seemed to be on the consensus that a later start gate would prove more efficient if conditions improved. Fifteen minutes later, the second start was activated and everyone started hunting down