Another day on the job

Time: 8:18pm. Location: My Tent. Reason: It is storming so hard out right now you wouldn’t believe it.

A few hours ago the radar map showed a large black blob moving this direction. A number of pilots (weather geeks) stood there looking at the screen and thinking to themselves “Black? I have never seen black on the radar before”. At this time a tall wall of clouds could be seen on the horizon. Shortly after this lightning could be seen filling the sky to the east.

As I laid in my hammock looking over some pictures from today’s sweet flight the wind began to blow, or shall I say howl. It went from being calm to blowing 45+mph in about 2 minutes. In the dark campers throughout the caravan park ran to tie things down and weather the oncoming storm. I did a bit of the same and then jumped into the tent just as it began to dump rain. At the moment the storm is raging outside, it’s full on nastiness out there. I am really hoping for two things: Firstly I hope I don’t get struck by lightning, Secondly I hope that the tree that I am under doesn’t blow over onto my tent as it is just upwind of me. Yikes!!!

Anyhow, the day was amazing; we were blesses with SUPER STRONG lift, a hard task to race through and great pilots to move things along. While no one finished the task (race course) due to a strong headwind, it was still super fun and exciting. I had a great start pushing out with a few other leading pilots, I then broke away from the group, made a low save on my own, got back to cloudbase, pushed a bunch of bar and somehow ended up out in front of the leading pack 2/3 of the way through the course in first place. At this moment there was only myself and one other pilot atleast 2 kilometers in front of the rest of the pilots. Andrew is a local here in Killarney as well as a Australian national team pilot, so her was good company. We pushed into the wind together and it was amazing fun. This did not last forever as a monster of a headwind and some strong sink drove us to the ground. After this a few (3) pilots flew over me and slightly further down the course. In the end I tied for second for the day with the lead points that gave me a bit of a boost.

Below are a few pictures that I took today. There is the stache which needs a trim, one of Killarney's lovely grass launches, a few landscape shots taken before todays start and a picture of Andrew as we lead the day.