A 60km or so task over to the next alley to the Constriction. :-)
Not wanting to go down in the flats I flew conservatively in the first half of the task. Too conservatively but the throught of bombing out again in the flats overcame my will to daringly push on. I wanted to get to goal today.
Losing the second gaggle a small group of us kept our heading, me leaving thermals before the others and acting as a thermal marker which now I see and understand as being a little unfair on my part, but hey..
The clouds we had experienced at the beginning of the course quickly burned off and we were left with blue skies. Heading over to Citrusdal, I came a cropper, not finding the lifty convergence in the valley and having been drifted downwind in the proceedings, lost time clipping the turnpoint at a right-angle and then headed into the small mountains to find some lift.
The views were absolutely stunning, the air having been cleaned out by a heavy rain fall last night.
However the Citrusdal valley was blowing strongly from the South The mountain side of the valley was windy and thermals were very blown. I drifted with the conditions for a while and hoped that I would get a few blips of something to take me to higher ground. Getting uncomfortably low, I pushed out into the valley to fly clear of rocks and scub in the event of landing. I I was at this point about 40 metres from the ground. Seeing a small field being hand ploughed I b-lined for that and bingo, the thermals released gave me my get out of jail card. Slight pressure on the speed bar to keep my heading and using the B's to maintain course and maximise lift, I found the core upwind and gained rapidly 500metres needed to reach the end of speed section and the goal line.
I couldn't see where it was from the trees and vineyards, but finally a small rugby field with goal posts either side came into view and the while plastic line across it. I was home. One of the lasts, but I had made it.
No walk out for me today and I was happy.
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