Rat Race Day 1 - Nick

Today I was looking forward to flying my new wing, the delta, in thermals. I only have about 5 hours of soaring on the glider so far. The task started with predictions of a inversion layer at 6000 so the two tasks were not too long (59K for the race div). The race start time was at 13:15 and as I stood in line and saw 13:10 and figured I would have trouble getting up, flying to rabies, getting up again...in 5 minutes.

I took off from the north launch, with a more than thorough safety check from Tom Chestnut. To my relief, I began to climb out immediately. At this point, the lead gaggle was well on their way to the first turnpoint Billy. I did find some company to eek out the last few feet before heading to Rabies, my start point.

The glide to Rabies was fairly buoyant, I arrived with decent altitude but not enough to head to rabies pk, this started my first scratch session of the day. I couldn't connect with anything over rabies and the wind was coming from the north. I came to the point where I was going have to commit to outside or inside the rabies ridge(china gulch). If I committed outside, I could glide to the normal lz, but have a hard time getting up.  While I was deciding I stumbled upon a thermal that turned out to be just so so. Because of the north wind, or committed me inside the rabies ridge. I was sinking into the gulch and was a little concerned with potential rotor from the north. I was about 500 feet agl and had my field picked out when I got my 1st low save. The thermal was only 400 ft/min but it took me all the way to about 5000'!  While climbing I saw a couple of comp gliders (blades) coming for me. It was shocking to see how fast they were coming.  The visual illusion made it look like they were climbing out.  They flew right through the thermal...apparently my thermal wasn't appealing enough to stop.

At the top of the climb I had options, I remember my mentor, Rick Ray, had mentioned that bunny meadow was a good source of thermals so I went there. It's about halfway between rabies peak and forest. I laughed out like a kid when I saw it. It really does look like a bunny rabbit!  From there I found some more lift and got to about 6000'. I pushed for Billy, my 1st turnpoint.

Billy was about 12K away, I would need to find a few more thermals to reach it with enough height for options.   At this point I had gliders below me. I pimped them for thermals and had a easy transit to Billy. Back to woodrat was the next turnpoint.

Billy wasn't working well so I had to fly along the hwy 238  hills to get back. I worked it enough to get back ti my original thermal in the china gulch. It took me back to 5000' and then I flew to woodrat. By now the winds were switching from the west. I arrive between low and high launch and could find anything I could turn in. Even worse was the high winds in woodrat. I got even with low launch and caught something that felt like soaring winds. It took me all the way up the ridge to high launch. From there I started to connect and climbed to my highest altitude (6574'). I tagged woodrat and started to head to Sugarl.

I chose a boaty line straight to Sugarl knowing that it wasn't the best route. The best route would be to repeat what I just did to get to Billy. I just didn't feel like going over there again when I could see a ton of gliders at Longsword vineyard!  So I pushed forward hoping to get lucky.

The wall of wind from the west was impressive, at one point I wasn't sure I'd even make longsword.  I was getting some pops here and there so I decided to head to the foothills to work any available lift and at least get sime diatance points while keeping longsword within gliding distance.   I started to get some 200-300 up on the vario.  I started to get a little hope that I could push to the way point but I was still low and in the lee.   My plan was to continue forward until i felt uncomfortable.   It was at this moment I took the biggest whack of my life. I can't describe it in percent asymmetric collapse..I looked up and saw blue sky. The glider was completely gone. As I felt lines brush my helmet I was glad I wasn't wearing my gopro. After a little bit of twisted risers and cascading collapses I recovered with about 300' of altitude loss. Funny enough I found a really good thermal immediately after and climbed out pretty high and started to work even more west. I started to feel some funky air again and decided to give up and head to longsword.

Longsword greeted me with the "pilot's glass of wine ". Alex and his family was there and soon Jk, laurel, and paul's family showed.

All in all it was a good flight. I got a free siv lesson in my new glider so I feel more connected to it's characteristics now. I did pretty decent in the scoring, coming in 6th in the race sport class.

I will try to link some pictures to this post later.