The contest is almost at an end and that means that the time to make points is dwindling. At this stage, points amount to being a certain amount of time ahead or behind another. And today, Noah had his work cut out for him. He was in second place, a little over 60 points behind Mike Sorenson. My landout on the thunderstorm day ended any hope of me having a reasonable performance here.
To do that, Noah needed to have a clean flight, but make a clean break from Mike. A tie would not serve Noah well going into the last day. We strategized having either an early or late start, whatever it took for him to break out on his own.
My morning went to pieces. I had trouble the glider and spent all morning getting it ready. It was a bit of a rush to get set up on the grid and be contest ready. I reviewed the assigned task, a nice mile sprint, and the weather on my phone. John Bird also gave us some forecasting advice. The day should peak late, with cloud suck and vertical development. Watch out for the cirrus at the end of the day.
We launched and Noah and I got together. The day was taking a while to cook, likely due to some residual ground moisture from the storms several days ago. Starting early was not the best strategy. We waited under a cloud, and Mike joined us. What to do? We waited and waited. All of the Club Class and 15 meter glider had gone. The 18 meter task was just about to open. At pm we headed out to the line. As I turned the line, I saw Mike glimmer two minutes behind us. I smiled, went for the line and then made a hard right back to the cloud that we came from.
We created a dilemma for Mike; start now with the prospect of catching some folks ahead, or give chase to us and potentially be dropped behind the pack at the end of the day.
