Jan 12 tracklog.
The final day of this comp and the task committee decided to go bold and send us out to Aguila (the direct way!) which, if you sink out, you're in the deep canyons or on the wrong side of the peak and a long retrieve back to Valle. And of course as we arrived at the TP, a bunch of cirrus showed up and it was time to switch to "survival mode" and wait it out.
Many gliders didn't make it and sunk out either at Aguila, or on the way back to Penon as the lift was in weird spots with lots of sink in between. But once back on the Wall it was easy up to cloudbase and then riding the convergence over Sacamacate to the San Francisco TP out by Mesa-D.
I was at cloudbase, 3400m, when I went on glide to tag the TP and it was enormous sink all the way there and back. I couldn't believe that much sink could exist and considered turning back to try to re-establish under the clouds and try again. But the Enzo in front of me was continuing on and I was in race mode, so I stuck it out. Bad mistake! Coming back from the TP I couldn't find a way out of the sink and shade and ended up dirting in San Lucas, while the Enzo found a better line and got back up under the convergence and presumably goal :)
Of course about 10 minutes later the sun fully came back out and it was probably easy flying as dozens of gliders flew overhead as I was packing up. But I wasn't too disappointed...it was a really cool flight especially the save over Aguila and a valuable learning experience. Sometimes you need to turn the race mode off!
I think about 50 pilots made goal today and Brett H and Josh were neck and neck for the $300 US prize money for today's winner. Awards ceremony is tonight and we'll find out who won overall.
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