First day was gray in the morning after a huge storm system with lots of rain had gone through the day before. It had not rained here for 6 months, and now it came with the pilots as usual… The first task was 157km straight to goal with a medium to strong tailwind. Total chaos at the tow paddoc, with no order even if we were supposed to launch in seeded order. I had a lot of stress trying to fix some instrument problems, and got at the end of the line even if I was ready long before others seeded after me. I got up withouth much drama, and took a late start time. As the GPS portion of my Compeo did not work I had no idea where to go, or where goal was, so I just had to follow some other pilots. All of those pilots landed before 100 km, so I had to follow the same line and just look for the goal fileld. I knew my backup GPS inside the harness was on and logging, so I would get scored if I could just find the goal.

I got lucky and saw a glimt of a glider turning low, and flew crosswind to find goal. All of the Norwegians made it in, with Jon first, then me, Nils and Olav. Dave Sieb won the day.

Today looked very god, and we got a 234km task via one TP. I was seeded in the top 30 after yesterday, and had to take the second launch for a Race task with the other top 30 pilots. Olav and me took the start together, and Jon was just behind us and much lower. He had to land soon after. I stayed in the gaggle, until around 150 km out, where I took a more westerly line towards some good looking cloudstreets. That did not work as well as I had hoped, and Olav who stayed on course got a better run to goal. The final glide was very tough as I was alone from 80 km out, and hit shitloads of sink from 40 km. I had to drift along in weak lift for a long time before getting back up to a 10/1 glide for safety to goal. Olav came in before me and Nils behind, don’t know the scores yet, Nils may have beaten us because of later start time. Around 50 pilots in goal, Robert Reisinger was first.

It’s the longest flight in km I ever did, and my back, shoulders and arms are now hurting seriously. It was quite turbulent air, and I’m not used to the glider yet so I use a lot of force to get it going where I want.

Unfortunately we might get a rest day tomorrow as we had a fatal accident again today. One pilot freefall from 2000 meters as his harness was somehow disconnected or broke free from the glider, and the parachute broke free from the harness on deployment from freefall. We do not know much more, both me and Olav saw it happen from the air as we were gliding from the start circle.

More info as we get it, it’s almost 02:00 here from the long drive home.