Forbes Flatlands 2018, day 2, outlanding.

It got windy, 35-40km/h, and not the good downwind windy, but crosswind windy,so it was slow progress on the task.

I had a OK start taking the second startgate with a group of 5-6 other gliders. We had a few nice thermals, pushing into the wind to stay upwind of the course line.

I stopped in a nice 3 m/s and took it to cloudbase around 90km from goal, while the 3 other pilots glided on as they were downwind of me. I topped out and saw the other pilots stop and start thermalling, but I got a bad line with massive sink and ended up 500m below in just a few minutes.

From there I tried to catch up, and passed on a weak thermal I should have stopped in, that was the mistake of the day. The next clouds were dying, and I had to slow down and go into “just stay up mode”.

I soon found myself low in broken lift and strong winds, and had to glide into the wind to reach a safe landing. Landed nicely and spent the next hour alternating packing up and just holding on to the glider so it did not blow away.

Olav made goal and said it was few pilots there today, seems like a hard task.

The road towards goal;