| Flight details: | The wind was pretty much on the hill and barely soarable, with an obvious inversion. There seemed to be two layers of cloud: proper cumulus at about 3,000ft and wispy bits of rapidly forming and dissipating cloud about 1,000ft lower - perhaps something to do with sea air but not an obvious or typical sea breeze convergence? I'm not sure what that was about.
A few hangies had already taken off, I think one had bombed out and a couple of others had scratched for a bit before gaining some height. The ridge was barely soarable, with little patchy half and 1-ups in the sunny spots, that needed some careful S-turns, always keeping a vigilant eye on other gliders, just to maintain and slowly scratch up to the top of the ridge where 360s could be done more confidently. A couple of times I got about 800ft ATO and was able to push out a bit. The air was very rough, even in the weaker thermals, strangely. After about an hour or so of climbing, sinking and scratching back up, I flew into a lovely 6-up over the sunny shoulder at one end of the ridge. I cranked the Discus over and just held it there, not having to adjust for the six or seven turns it took to gain a thousand feet or so. Then the wispies were blowing by underneath me and I got a bit nervous. So I made for the coast upwind, only losing height by pulling the bar right in.
I reached the coast (only 1.5km away), turned and flew along it a bit, not spotting Luke below beckoning for me to land in the field next to the restaurant at Arrieta. So I turned and made a dash back to the ridge, then headed back over to where I'd found my 6-up. This time I got severely turned and so headed away back along the ridge where it was scratchy, still a bit rough but controllable. It was switching off a bit and all the effort was going into just maintaining, while avoiding other air traffic so I came down for a reasonably good landing in lumpy air over the bomb-out field.
The whole week was great fun, with a good crow |
