The staging system in our towing line B is not working at all, it’s chaos and pilots just line up wherever they want so those in front cannot get in the line as we are supposed to. Lukas and me just waited until the end before getting in line today. Standing there in 35 degrees with harness and helmet on for one hour is not fun.
It worked out good with the town, I got up and waited in cloudbase for about 15 minutes for the second start time. I had Atilla and Gerolf to my left, and we went on a very long glide towards the first TP. We found good air and just slowed down in the liftbands for the first 35 km. There Atilla stopped for a strong but broken thermal, while Gerolf went ahead and got a 6 m/s thermal maybe 4-5 km ahead of us. We dived for it, and got to cloudbase in good lift. I lost sight of Atilla and went right a bit to stay under good clouds to the TP, but it was not a good line, the whole area felt like a sink hole.
After taking the TP I aimed for a thermal Gerolf was marking just ahead, but it was crappy and we both left it, I was maybe 100 meters under Gerolf. From there I had a horrible line, and could not find any lift in the whole area. I was at 1800 meters when we left the last thermal, and could not get up in anything, searching under good clouds and sunny ridges that normally should work gave nada. I soon found myself landing 55 km short of goal, in a paddock full of sheep, I could just not believe I had to land in such good conditions. What a contrast to the day before.
Olave made goal today with a respectable time, as did almost everyone else. (Notable exeptions were Zac the leader of the comp, and Davis who was “not tired at all” at briefing :-))
At least I have three more days to get back in the top 10, I think it will be hard but that is the goal now.