Dave's Day 11

Today, it was expected that convection would start late and finish somewhat early so we had a relatively short 3:30 area task.  The 18 m class was second on the grid, and our gate opened around 3 pm.  With an expected end of convection before 7 pm, there was not much time to waste before the start.

Unfortunately, we had a bad day today.  Looking at the baro trace shows part of the reason.  Around 1720, we got into a hole and it took a long time to get out of it.  We were running, what looked like, a good line of clouds, but nothing was working.  We wasted many turns trying to find something and took a weak 2.9 knot climb so we could move on.  Fortunately we were not alone as there was a mixed group of 15 and 18 meter gliders as we had a common leg at this point.  Finally, 20 minutes and 40 km later we connected with a 6 kt climb that got us up and running again.

We also wasted time on final glide trying to center a last thermal, but eventaully gave up on it and headed for home on a slim final glide.  Fortunately, there were still a few clouds we could bump on the way in and we were able to stay on glide slope.

As typically happens, the fast guys don't find the holes and that was no exception today as they smoked us.