Worlds 2013, day 7, task 6

Task 6 was a dogleg to Gulgong goal, 220km. It was nice conditions early in the morning, but lots of cirrus moved in over us when setting up, shading the courseline. I got a weaklink break, and had to come back for a reflight. As I landed the winds picked up strongly, and that would be the case for the rest of the day. I got a good reflight towing behind Bruce, and drifted out of the startcircle under the shaded sky.

A lot of pilots took the first start gate at 14:10, so we had a nice gaggle going up towards the turnpoint. The wind was quite strong the whole courseline and increasing as we approached the turnpoint. It had been open flatlands with good landing options in strong winds, but after the TP we got hills and forested areas. I got a thermal over some small ridges, but the drift would take me in over trees and non-landable terrain. I was flying backwards into the trees in the wind, so I chose to play it safe and pull in to land at the last landable field. It was not fun to land, very turbulent and gusts of 50 km/h that increased to over 100 later in the evening. The task was stopped because of the winds, but sometime after I decided to land, so I get penalized in the scores.

James Stinnet landed just behind me and we packed up together in the paddoc and walked out to the main road, only to find locked gates so we could not get the car in. Georgia did a great job of finding an alternate route through another property so we only had to carry 500 meters.

Scores on the two stopped tasks are not fair, as they do not take into account start times and height of the pilots.

Courious cattle following us around the paddoc
Courious cattle following us around the paddoc
This guy had no hurry crossing the road
This guy had no hurry crossing the road
Lizard with a blue tounge
Lizard with a blue tounge