Arcones #3

Wednesday saw us shipped off 80km away to some tiny little launch near Atuata and then back again to Arcones in time for tea...NOT! Unfortunately some bright spark had the idea so set a late task into the flats even though it was gusting like mad on launch and patently not-taskable. For sure we could have gone free-flying, but it wasn't to be. The committee were insistent that in spite of the dangerous launch conditions and the constant cry of window closed / window open / window closed every minute from the Meet Director we would fly a task. Launch was so windy that many pilots (even the good ones) were calling for it to be stopped. Eventually there was a lull long enough to get most of the pilots off at about 18:30 -19:00 and 1 hour left of task time for a 47km task. I was lucky to connect with something at launch and went on a 15km glide to the ground.. lucky to fly 15km in 44 minutes but unlucky to be 15km from Arcones and have to wait 4 hours for the 'Dis'-organisation to send a retrieve minibus at 23:15. Dog walking in the dark tonight!

Thursday was totally blown out but we sat on the hillside anyway and tried to get launched between the gusts.
Eventually it was all too much and despite no official canning of the day the pilots 'mutinied' and took themselves back down the hill!

On Friday the wind was was just as strong! It was scary at times and horribly scary at others as gliders got pinged skywards at launch and then pinned in the wind. After the task had been changed and there were still 75 pilots on launch at window closed time it was stopped. Some of the guys in the air managed to fly most of the 130km task while the rest of us went back down hoping for good conditions for the last day.