Canoa Day 1

Man, the first day was fun. I had a terrible start (30 seconds slow) which I couldnt recover from but I did manage to pass thre pilots on the way to the first turnpoint (12km) and I never looked back at them. I was chasing Mike Glennon (2nd from last year) but he slowly opened up his lead thru the course.

I took great turnpoints - cutting them nice and tight but Mike did the same. I´m happy (semi-surprised) with my fifth place finish but I´m looking forward to improving. I´ll work on my start for one thing and then I think I have more faith that I can fly faster and lower on the ridge - the sea breeze is just THAT smooth but it´s taken me three days to gain my confidence. I flew with about 10lbs of ballast (beach sand) in my harness yesterday which helped and I may try a bit more. You only get one step on launch before you ride the elevator so ballast doesn´t really hurt your launch (or landing).

With such a short flight (42 minutes on course + only 20 minutes before the start) I was geared up for some sight-seeing in thie unique and beautiful place that I chased after OB to the cliffs to the North. They aren´t sending the competitors that was as there are NO landing field at the bottom of the bluffs but there is penty of lift along them and they are soooo bautiful, I just had to go.

Dustin was already over there and Jeff joined him but they ventured off way further than I wanted to. I stayed on the reliable cliffs that had the sea breeze blowing straight in while they went a bit downwind into no man´s land.

Check out some pics on Jeff´s blog at http://hang6.blogspot.com Here is one from his blog:


I had loaned my camera to Jamie today so I had no camera.