| Flight details: | Task One of the Chabre Open was exactly the same as Task Two last time, except that the cylinders were bigger, which was nice. Overcast damped things down at first; I drifted over the back of launch without getting very high, and decided to head for the second turnpoint. I arrived well below ridge height, but Hoppy demonstrated that it was possible to scratch up and then find good lift over the summit (even if you don't weigh, like Hoppy, about the same as a large butterfly).
The drift in the climbs there was so strongly from the SE that at one point I considered abandoning the task and heading off on a downwind XC. But I caught up with a few more PGs and set off SE to the turnpoint at the far end of the volcano (which, disappointingly, turns out not to be a volcano at all). The glide was buoyant on the crossing, but once above the mountain I met strong headwind. Still, I made it to within a couple of km of the turnpoint, climbed there, and dashed in to tag it.
A good climb with half a dozen PGs followed. At the top of it, most of them headed to the ridge to the NE, but, with the wind running along it, I didn't fancy it, so set off in the middle of the valley, hoping for a climb from the small gravelly hills there. It didn't happen, and I landed about 10k short of the final turnpoint and goal at Aspres.
A nice woman passed in a tatty van and promised to return to pick up me and Bas, a Dutch pilot. She did, in an even tattier car, and took us to Serres, where infuriatingly the retrieve bus arrived just as our beers did, so we had to neck them. 26k of the 45k task, 31k on Leonardo. Nice. |
