Snot Rockets

Basement boys did well, except me. Ray made goal as did Flappie. Bob, Nikki, Scrappy Greg & Alex hit all way points except final goal. More details to come. Aloha, Don

I made it!!
First time in goal was so cool!! But to get there I had to go thru some drama...
after setting up my GPS I changed the batteries and the navigation got mess up. Instead of showing the first waypoint, it was showing the 3rd one (but I didn't know)... after the race started and I noticed everybody going to the "wrong waypoint" it hit me... I lost a few minutes to figure that out, then fix the gps and re-start the race. The cool thing was being very high helped me. I went to "burnt" and find some crazy convergency lift and climbed quite high. After I fixed and re-started I got a big frontal, and the glider (sol Tracer) behaved really well adn was easy to regain control, building my confidence and raising the "bump tolerance".
The thermals were sharp, small and a bit bumpy. The gaggle was confusing and quite scary, with bullet thermals pushing guys above you very fast. We even had a mid-air collision with parachute deployment! I'd rather cruise away from it and I manage to play at the edge of the gaggle for most of the time and venture sometimes by myself, looking for lift, and it payed off!
After hitting the last turnpoint, I pushed glide towards goal, realizing I was too far to make to the next gaggle, I had to turn back to woodrat (launch) to tank up some more altitude. Quentin was there too and we shared some thermals. I was lucky and took some bumpy ones to get enough altitude but I wasn't comfortable in that rowdy air and went downwind at speeds close to 60KM/H to the next ridge. Getting there I realize I wasn't quite as high as I thought and I almost gave up and landed, but I decided to fly right over the low peak where 3 ridges met. Sure enough it worked :) I got high enough to check in my gps the glide to dest. was 7:1 so I went on glide. Sometimes in sink I thought I was not gonna make it but all I could do by then was to keep the fingers crossed, and it worked. I made it! Aloha, Ray