As you can see from Jarek's earlier post, the pre-start gaggles today were huge. The problem was we couldn't climb more than about 400 ft above release altitude in ridiculously weak lift.
I was one of the first to launch today around 1330 and we struggled until 1430, when suddenly the lift increased and top of lift rose 1500 feet in a matter of minutes. I assume there was some sort of inversion in the sounding and at that time, the temperature rose to the point where the rising air could get past this inversion. This is clearly visible in the barograph trace below..
The other thing that you can see in the trace is that my start occurred at the lowest point on my trace. Today, I really blew the start. I was not happy with the huge gaggles and moved away and into the start area (in the blue) to join a smaller group who, it turned out, were circling in nothing. I tried a couple of wisps that had formed and found nothing and just kept getting lower. As I crossed the start line I headed back towards town where there had been climbs for the last 2 hours with the thought that if I found a good climb I could restart. Over town I had a lovely 1.4 kt climb and based on this I elected not to restart and headed out on course low.
This really slowed me down, as most other people started about 4000 ft, so I had to spend at least 10 minutes extra climbing to make up the deficit. While this did not cost me a first place finish, it did cost me about 14 places on the day.
So now the list looks like this:
- don't deviate too much
- don't make stupid mistakes
- don't start too early, and
- don't start too low
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