We finally managed to get Day 3 in the bag here in Moriarty today. The forecast was for thunderstorms so everyone was antsy to get started and on task. The task for us sports class gliders was a 3 turn Turn Area Task, first south, then back north, with the final area just to the east of Moriarty. Minimum time was 2.5 hrs to allow us time to get around the course and beat any developing weather. Michael Westbrook and I started together 2 minutes after the start opened and we weren’t the only ones who went out on course right away. We had a nice street running towards the east edge of the first turn to start with but quickly fell off of it and got split up while trying to dig out south of Estancia. We never saw each other again, which was unfortunate for me especially.

I found loads of sink around Mountanair and spent a lot of time searching off course for lift under many cumulus clouds until I finally found a nice climb that I took up to nearly 16,000 feet. From there I pushed north, paralleling the Manzano’s and Sandia mountains. I tended back towards Moriarty on the way north as there seemed to be a good blue hole closer to the mountains. The last cloud I encountered was about 2 miles before the second turn area. There was absolutely calm air where there weren’t clouds so I glided into the turn area a bit and then straight back out to the south which wasn’t exactly on course. Another diversion, but it got me back to the clouds and with another relatively low point i was back climbing and headed towards Cline’s Corners.

Thanks to basically clipping the first two circles I was forced to go to the back of the Cline’s Corners circle. This wasn’t too bad as I found a good thermal right over the Corners and used that to glide out into the rest of the circle which was covered in shadow. I had enough altitude to make it back to the sunny side of the cirlce to climb up and get enough altitude for final glide to Moriarty. Of course I immediately found some fantastic sink and had to stop again for another short climb (although a strong one) and get back some buffer altitude, and ended up finding nothing but lift the rest of the way in and finished high. My speed was about 58 or 59 mph which I was pretty happy with until I heard how fast Michael went and then saw the score sheet! It looks like I was 11th for the day, slipping to 4th overall. Tomorrow is supposed to be a good day so we should have a great race to finish up the contest.