32.881678,-111.854982,Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, Arizona,
USA

Steve Pearson, the fastest pilot to goal on the last day. He gets
within the 1 km goal cylinder by 2 meters.

The forecast on Saturday morning was better than the previous day where we had
an extreme inversion. On this day the inversion was there but not nearly as
strong. It still didn't look like there would be much in the way of cumulus
clouds like there were on the first three days.

The winds were supposed to be light so we could come back to the Francisco
Grande. The task committee wanted a little longer task than the day before:

I was off third a few minutes after 1:30 PM and the lift was somewhat weak but
not as bad as the day before, very much in line with the forecast. By 2:10 I was
at 6,100' over the hotel with Joe Bostik, Bruce Barmakian, Jonny Durand,
Krzysztof Grzyb, and Kip Stone. We all headed south up against the 8 mph wind to
get to the southern edge of the 5 kilometer start cylinder.

This really didn't work out that well. We couldn't get up over 5,300' and there
were just the five of us out there as Jonny got low and had to head back.
Finally at 4,600' Joe headed east toward the gravel pit, the same pit that let
me down on the previous day.

Down to 2,900' (1,600') Joe and I found the 100 fpm and started working it. Six
minute later I spotted Steve Pearson climbing at 600 fpm just to my north. I
joined him and climbed fast. By three minutes before the third clock at 3:10
there were half a dozen of us at 8,300'. A number of pilots who were over us
when we started to climb out, including Steve and Jonny, had already taken the
2:50 clock and were already out on the course line.

We took the 3:10 clock and I was on top, which felt great. Joe was off to the
left. We found 200+ fpm 13 km down the course line and we all took advantage of
it to get back to 7,800'. This made it easy to get another bit of lift and make
the first turnpoint at 5,500', hit a nice thermal to get us back to 6,100', and
then head northwest back toward I 10 and the Highway 87 intersection.

As we flew along the course line we went over the guys from the previous start
clock. Unfortunately, they weren't marking much lift. I found 50 fpm and 14 fpm
over them and continued on to the turnpoint.

Down to 3,200' at the turnpoint I spent 6 minutes searching around in zero sink
watching three guys below me land. Heading north I finally spotted guys circling
to the south west and headed for them. Down to 1000' AGL I found 200+ fpm at the
edge of an orchard and before I got to where I saw the other pilots. I saw Jonny
just over me and hung on to the best looking lift around.

I was able to climb up and back to 5,700' and was debating when to leave to go
up the course line. I spotted three pilots, including Jonny, circling ahead and
went for them. The sun was low in the sky and there were clouds moving in
causing a large shadow on the course line. When I got to the pilots they were
leaving and there wasn't any lift.

I headed to the northwest to get around the shadow but there was still no lift
and I found a nice open field to land in next to a road.

Only Zac, Steve and Joe made it in. Zac won the competition with Chris Zimmerman
next and Joe third.

Results here: http://soaringspot.com/2013scfr.