And what a fantastic month it has been. I came here to learn and by golly did I! Now over the next two years I'll build on this foundation and throw it all out there in Narromine, NSW for the next JWGC!
To everyone who helped me get here, thank you so much for your support, your generosity made it all possible. My home club at Balaklava had a big fundraiser the weekend before I began my journey. It was such a great night and to everyone who came along and chipped in and helped me out from the start, thank you. It was so great to see in action the tight knit community we have there. My gliding Career has been raised there and from there it will only continue to progress. Though that does mean that I will continue to steal the Mini Nimbus for long flights ;-)
There is a person also from Balaklava GC who has helped me out enormously for this trip. He washed and de-bugged my wings, ballasted, taped and polished the glider, didn't drop the wing too many times as he ran the wing while I launched. And most of all he came all this way to do all of those things. And before the comp we even managed to get off the ground together in an Arcus T!!!
A very big thank you to Andrew Horton.
And also my crew who couldn't make it over here, Dad was there every morning with another email of advise, stats, weather updates and predictions. More stats from Colin, top daily tips from Jess (even after she left from her week here) mum in the background of Skype calls from dad and though polishing wings being her speciality she couldn't be here, my girlfriend Rachel was only a Skype call away as I'd get myself ready on the grid for the flight ahead.
So what happened yesterday? There was a small window of opportunity to get another day in with the weather system that had been through. It made for multiple task changes, finally settling on a racing task of 245km and of course all this on the grid, not very long before launch. To start with, climbs were very weak and very tricky to climb to cloud base. Launching last didn't exactly help this but accounts from people launching earlier said that once at cloud base they would leave and not get a climb till at all till very low. Things did start to pick up though and I started with a big gaggle and powered on down a massive cloud street on the first leg. Matt and I were wing tip to wing tip most of the way and holding height too. Around the first turn and we were now on a cross wind leg. Huge gaps between streets! And now it started to get tricky. Weakening climbs and slow glides. Around the second turn and searching for a climb over very marginal terrain with little options. Most of the others deviated at a very sharp angle to get back to big cloud. I went the opposite way at a shallow angle toward smaller, fresh looking clouds but that came to a dead end and I was punished by not sticking to the group and then made an even sharper deviation to the big clouds and more landing options. Even slower glides now and taking any climb that was enough to turn in. Inching along the final tailwind leg home. I saw a few gliders turning and made my way to join them. We left together a flew to join under another two gliders. This climb was now the strongest I'd had for a long while and took us almost to cloud base and at a marginal glide from 50km out. The day was well and truly dead and only bubbles of buoyant air over the pine forests brought us home. That glide was thrilling! And pushing low chasing a D2 to cross the 3km finish ring 50m off the deck for a straight in on runway 24.
The final party was last night but I kept it pretty tame and stayed away from the polish vodka. We have a big drive today to get the glider back to Wasserkuppe. They had 'official' 'Epic Achievement Awards' presented around mid night, very similar to Paper Plate awards at Joey Glide. I was awarded 'Longest Fight Lost.' For my struggle below a certain altitude for over 30min before outlanding. All of the awards were 'Epic' stats from the two weeks of competition. And how those stats were gathered, that would have been an arduous task. One of the really funny ones. 'Shallow penetration' touched the sector by 1 meter.
Lowest starter, highest finisher, furthest person from the airfield, furthest outlanding, most outlandings (wasn't me!!!) and so on. It was a good night
Right now we are getting to the tail end of the closing ceremony. It's even worse than the opening. Doubling up of thank you speeches in English and Polish.... Double the length. Then two class to give prizes to individually up from 10th.. And they play 'We are the Champions' by Queen for each.. And to top it off, of course it looks like the best flying day that we never had.
Long drive ahead, pretty easy on the Autobahn with a Cobra trailer!!
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