East Coast Championship (Day 5)

The day started wet and humid. The ground was saturated with inches of rainfall and the sky was filled with formless gray fog. It was hard to believe the forecast for partly cloudy skies. I checked out the wind and rain damage to the wheat field across the road.


We eventually setup in preparation for a short 24 mile task to south. 24 miles? Yep. That was tough enough with the 2000 foot top of light lift. Dustin and Johnny entertained the crowd with a low high-speed pass down the glider line while we waited for sunshine to arrive.


I had a sweet tow to near cloud base and immediately headed for the start circle. After a reasonably good start I headed to the eastern upwind side of the Choptank river. Apparently everyone else thought the downwind west side was the place to be. I used up all my altitude flying back across the river to hook up with Mark, Paul, and Sonny. I jacked myself out of that hole and was soon back at base. I out climbed most of the group on the next climb and struck out further to the west by myself. That didn't work out and I came back in low under Mark and Sonny. We sniffed around for a long time but I eventually landed in a nice dry field followed shortly by Mark and Rich. We watched Davis and Sonny get away as we talked to a newspaper reporter that stopped by to see what was happening.


The day had very little value point-wise. (The scores are online).

Later in the afternoon we had another pond-skimming session on Lake Ridgley and then a large group of us went out to dinner. The next two days should be flyable.