Florida Ridge - Day 1

The wind shook the tents all night long and was still making the flags snap at sunrise. The fear of another blown-out day at the Florida Ridge was gnawing on my psyche. A quick check of the forecast on my cell phone from my tent gave me some hope as the computer models showed less wind later in the day.

Before we left the orchard where we are camping, Rodger showed us the Easter "surprise" his girls packed for him. Sweet.

The day's task was a zig-zag crossing downwind course to the south that turned out to have some crossing upwind legs after the wind veered more the the west than predicted. The sport class, that features Allen, Brian, Patrick, and Rodger had a straight downwind task to the same goal. We all had an open start window, meaning we could leave anytime after 2pm.

I launched second and left as soon as possible with Kevin, Paris, and Paul. We had long low-altitude glides with weak climbs until about the time we reached the first turn point. The climbs started becoming stronger and the were climbing higher. Unfortunately, the rest of the pilots were catching us. We turned into the crossing upwind leg to the second turn point and had to push upwind in the blue. It was tough, but not impossible since there was a lot of broken lift around.

The last leg was directly upwind, at least for me. I chickened out on the final glide over 3 miles of orange groves and took a safety climb that let 5 gliders get in front of me. (If I came up short I would have to land in the orchards, there was not bail out area.)

Most of the field, no matter when they started, landed roughly at the same time. I can not remember that happening before. I walked through the "inland beach" we landed in, broke down the gliders, took some pictures of the happy pilots at goal, and waited with George for our driver Ron. Mark landed back on course, but found another ride. We declined a ride that Jack offered so we could help Ron find Linda. Once loaded we drove a few miles away into a sugar cane field to extract LInda.

We had a good dinner at the Ridge and spent the evening at the Gator Bait Pub. All-n-all, a good way to start the meet.