Dave's Day 12

So far there have been no days here without some little hiccup in the weather.  Today, that hiccup was the spreading out of the cu creating large blue holes.  Overall, it was a good day because the task kept us in the good areas most of the time.  On the second leg, I probably deviated more than I needed to, but I was with another glider and felt it was better to stay together than to deviate less.

 The third leg was quite good as I met up with a bunch of Open class gliders that had a similar leg, although I did make an error going into the third turnpoint as evidenced by the 90 degree deviation just before the turnpoint.  Once again, I headed for a cu that delivered no lift and wasted the altitude and time to deviate.

The fourth leg was the lowest and weakest as it was crosswind and there were less clouds and no streets to follow.  Just before the last turnpoint, there was a nice cloud with a gaggle climbing and I deviated towards it, climbed, then went into the turnpoint and back to the cloud.  This was again a deviation that I didn't need to make.  I should have first gone to the turnpoint.

When I compared my trace to that of today's winner, I flew 350 km to cover the 313 km course and he flew 333 km.  That extra 17 km over 2:45 task length adds up to almost 7 km/hr.  So once again, I need to deviate less, even though it seems like a good idea at the time.

As I topped out the last climb after the turn and started my final glide, the sky towards home was clear of cu from about 35 km east of Leszno to as far as I could see to the west.  I thought, I'm sure glad they set the task in this direction.