Manilla Day 4

The wind was forecast to be lighter today so James and I were leaning towards doing a triangle. While my main goal is to fly a big open distance flight, triangles do have some very positive aspects. For example, if you attempt an open distance flight and you are even remotely successful, you will be landing a very long retrieve away from home. You fly a 100km triangle, you've had a great flight and you get to land in a nice grassy paddock with cold beer a few steps away...most would say the decision is easy.

However, as soon as we arrived on the NE launch we knew it wasn't to be a triangle day. A solid ENE wind was blowing and we went up and down on the NE side of the mountain for about an hour. There were clouds to the south of us and a line running out to The Gap so James suggested we fly south to Baldwin and try to connect with them. It was the best idea all day, James led, Oli Blonske and I followed and promptly got flushed. James got low near Baldwin but scraped enough height to get back to Borah. The sky blew up in the afternoon making for an amazing sunset.