Before the start, as I had climbed up to cloud base at 8300 feet, I saw a couple of gliders that were above cloud base out in the blue. The flarm showed they were 1500 ft above me, so out of curiosity, I went over and joined them and found about 1 kt lift that eventually turned to 3 kts and I was able to climb. At first there were only a few of us, but nothing attracts another glider like a glider circling higher than him and soon there was a large group. The lift was quite smooth, so I think it was a thermal wave being generated on the upwind side of the cloud. It eventually occurred to me, that instead of just playing in the wave to kill time before the start, that this would also be a good tactical move. I was able to climb to 11,000 feet about 4 mins after the gate opened and then cross the start line at 10,500
I turned at about the middle of the first turn area as there was a bit of a hole ahead of me and it looked like I had a nice alignment of clouds along the second leg. After the start, my first run was 106 km and on my first thermal I saw 14 kts on the averager and had a thermal average of 8.2 kts. I was able to run another 82 km before I got my next 8.2 kt climb. Half way down the second leg things were going great and I was averaging 164 km/hr on the task. I needed to go deep into the 2nd area at Laredo, but part of the turn area overlapped Mexico, so I couldn’t go there, and in the center of the area was the 5 mile class D Laredo airport control zone that we are not allowed to overfly – so I went east into the turn area and things started to get soft. I found myself down at 4500 and none of the last clouds had produced any reasonable lift, so I turned and headed north. By now, my task speed had dropped to 153. I took a couple of less than optimal climbs and spent to much time searching and my speed was now down to 144. It really is amazing what a low spot can do to your speed.
I finished the task at 148 km/hr, but that was not nearly fast enough for the day. Once again I had 12% thermalling during the flight with 5.7 kt average climb rate. The lost time in the Laredo area certainly hurt!
Today is a rest day, so there will be no updates until after flying on Monday.
