Chelan Open Day 4, Task 2

The launch at Chelan is on the western side of the enormous Columbia river, and the hardest part of most flying days here is crossing the river valley and getting into the flat lands. With southerly wind forecast, oday's task was called as a 70Km race directly up the river to Okanogan in the North and debate raged around one question, to cross or not to cross? Fly the west side of the river in the hills or cross immediately to the flats and get a straighter downwind run at goal? Much talk of how the hills never worked, the early wind techs not getting great height and dusties showing all over the flats combined to make up my mind - cross early and fly the flats.

If you want a succinct and intelligent breakdown of the whole task, I recommend heading over to Brian's blog now. However if you want an excruciating blow by blow description of the first 10Km, by all means read on. Sorry, need to do this for me as much as you ;-)

The majority of the field formed a large gaggle around 2100m a few minutes before the start (the same height we comfortably crossed on Monday) and most pushed to the upwind side of the start gate preparing to cross the river. Then something happened. The race started and a group of about 15 gliders directly upwind from me began to cross, I turned and began to cross the river and a few moments later looked over my shoulder to see the remainder of the field flying directly north to try the west side of the river. I was already downwind of the crossing group and likely to be further downwind, and alone, by the time I crossed, I watched Brian zig and zag working out which way to go and a few moments of indecision later I turned left and went for safety in numbers.

There wasn't any major sink on the first glide but we were flying onto higher terrain so not a huge amount of height to play with. I joined a few gliders climbing away from the main gaggle in what looked to be a much better climb. There was plenty of lift around but it was more a case of averaging out the general area. Back at 1650m I had hunted around for several turns in zero and less when I saw the lead gaggle a short glide downwind and climbing well. I glided in under them, found nothing, flew to a smaller group of pilots circling nearby, found nothing. Even 100m off the valley floor I wasn't overly worried as I'd managed to fly onto a rocky, sun-baked windward facing bowl - the kind of place where you would think the laws of thermodynamics shouldn't actually allow air to go down on a sunny day. Apparently they do.

In the end, half the field of 82 pilots got to goal, including all the pilots I was with in the climb I left to chase the lead gaggle. Brian was in that climb and said it eventually got them to 2300m, slow but it got there. I was happy with all of the decisions I made during the flight, but obviously leaving that climb was what broke the day for me.

The lesson for me was to get established on course before you start racing. Zeroing at 1650m about 1100m terrain doesn't count as established, not enough to go chasing the lead gaggle, especially when they are less than half a glide ahead. Also I should have been positioned better at the start, I wasn't focusing as well as I could have been in the 10 minutes before start which is when the decision should have been made on which route to take.

Results are here

Friday looks like another windy day.