SAFA Skysailor Magazine

24 SKY SAILOR March | April 2021 If you haven’t come across the Victorian Turnpoint Challenge yet, it’s a set of 750 waypoints with a 400m radius spread across the entire state. The game is simple, fly through the boundary of as many points as you can in one season, and the pilots that tag the most in a single flight, and the most for the season, win their category. The Challenge was put together by Duane Wilson, Mike Chapman, Peter Kemeny, Jan Bennewitz, Ramon Collodetti, David Snowdon and Jacqx Bryanna. When I started the turnpoint challenge this season as a new pilot living in Mt Beauty, I had simple goals of getting across to Clear Spot from Mystic, or even a simple valley crossing to a turnpoint on a ridge before heading back to the LZ. But now, joining the Challenge means that on any given day I make decisions on which turnpoints are possible – I’m thinking bigger: Maybe it’s a great day to try the run from Mt Emu to Gun- dowring, or maybe cloudbase is low, but I can do the Mystic and Clear Spot yo-yos, ducking out to tag nearby turnpoints before returning to the safety of a consistent thermal. I’ve become much more aware of using my instruments while flying, and it’s set me up to fly some really solid XC flights as a low airtime pilot. The best part is that because it runs all season, I can choose which days to do deeper checkpoints, and which days to stay closer to my glide out. I set myself the simple goal of flying through 50 turn- points this season. Whether I achieve it with excellent XC flights, or by flying new sites and tagging launch and landing turnpoints, it will develop me as a pilot. It’s challenged me to fly new locations and into new valleys, and this experience has made me more confident when flying away from home. Unfortunately for me, another local, Maarten Mulder, is also in my (Fun) category, and at this point of the season, he’s leads me by 18 turnpoints. It’s currently daylight from the two of us to the rest of the new pilot field. Maarten is a great guy, and the better pilot, and what makes chasing him even more enjoyable is that both of us have really similar attitudes when it comes to safety margins, so I know he’s not on top of the board because he’s happier to take risks, but I’d really like to beat him… So, knowing Maarten has a packed work calendar to stop him racking up the turnpoints, that the weather is good down south, and that next weekend the Skyhigh guys are meeting at Portland for the fly-in, I leave the safety of gentle inland breezes, and head to the coast to work on my Fly Further by Christie Hamilton Peter Moriarty flying the low dunes of Bridgewater Bay near the South Australian border for one turnpoint Anthony Gerimia shows what’s possible on a dark and windy afternoon at 13th Beach Bruce Agnew flies into the sunset at Ocean Grove, above the surfers and poodle walkers