Oz 2007, Forbes, task 3

Two days ago was the best day I’ve seen in a long time, perfect cu’s, low winds and high cloudbase. As I wrote before we did not fly because of the accident the day before. See the Ozreport and other blogs for more speculations about the accident, but beware that there’s a lot of rumors and inaccurate information out there. We do not have all the facts, and everyone seems to love to speculate. I’ve seen the pictures of the failed bridles and hangloops, the main hangloop failed just above the harness slider, the parachute bridle was intact, so something in the attachment to the harness broke. Check your harness for wear and tear as normal, if everything looks good you should be safe. If it’s very old or worn you should replace it.

Yesterday we got a 179 km dogleg task. We were a little slow getting going because of strong winds at launch. I got 100 meters and then Grant on the trike hit a thermal that left me no chance to save the weaklink. I tried to take the thermal, and drifted back and over the airstrip, but I had to glide back as I drifted too much. That put me in a very bad position as I was among the top 30 and had to take the race start at 14:30. I was now one hour behind the rest of the pack, alone, and just had to fly very conservatively under the thickening cirrus. I eventually got to goal after 4 hours in the air, but I was heavily penalized and dropped 11 places in the overall scores. Feels quite unfair, as there was nothing I could do to to avoid it. No one would be able to hang on in that air.

Jon did a great flight and came in at 4. place. Olav and Nils had good flights too. Easy retrieves with everyone in goal, but still we are not home until 23:00.

Today the front came through, with wind and rain. Probably no flying.

Results.