Final results can be found here.
After the final task day it was party time at Mike Sadan's house, with mucho salmon, corn, salad, beef, and plenty of veggies along with a bonfire and DJ. It was late enough at night that it had cooled off from the daytime high of 32C, and the mosquitos had largely disappeared in the cool.
After yesterday's result I was hoping to crack the top 10, but I missed it by one and ended up 11th overall after 5 tasks. But I managed to come in 1st in the women's class and 5th amongst the Canadians. I had a lot of fun during the comp and it was especially fun to show the visiting pilots the local scenery and show off what Pemberton has to offer when it's on. We were quite lucky with the weather in that it was mostly sunny and hot for the entire comp (it *can* rain here in August for days, although that's rare). Unfortunately the comp wasn't an unqualified success due to John's death on day 2, and there was many a conversation about how to prevent such a horrible thing from happening again.
Jim and Corinne did an awesome job putting together this comp and running it with a minimum of volunteers and resources (even less resources than a typical American comp, and nothing like the resources of a European comp) while at the same time attempting to cater to all classes of pilot. Many novice pilots I spoke to were quite happy with their personal flying and learned a lot. Things like how to fly faster than they might otherwise, how to program and follow a GPS, how to evaluate conditions, and watching other pilots for additional information. Denis Cortella did a couple of excellent talks that were well-attended and his presence was well-appreciated by all. And Pal Takats who did an SIV course just prior to the comp did very well as well, flying an EN-B and putting many EN-D gliders to shame :)
So I'm back in Vancouver for a few days, and then it's off to Sun Valley for the World Cup. I'm super-happy with the glider so far but I'm glad I got so much airtime on it this week (20+ hours). Now I'm quite comfortable on it and ready to tackle the even bigger air of SV!
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