David Whittle <<david.whittle>>
writes:

Saturday in South Florida was another exceptional day with early
Cu’s and light and variable winds. The winds were lighter than forecast making
the original task to Wallaby too much of a stretch. Steve Larson was back from
his travels and suggested a quadrangle from the Ridge West to the junction of 80
and 31 (edge of Fort Myers), then North on 31 to the junction of 31 and 74, then
East on 74 to the junction of 27 and 29 (Palmdale) and then back to the Ridge.
Great task, four people up for it, Jonathan Boarini, Steve Larson, David Lopez
and myself. The team launched between 11:30 and 12:30.

Initially the going was good with all clouds providing good climbs, this gave
Steve and his Exxtacy and excuse to go like a man possessed and apart from one
sighting the other side of Labelle that was the last we saw of him until we got
back to the flight park. To the West of Labelle, Jonathan got very low as the
Cu’s here were small and weak, there was a line of stronger Cu’s some miles to
the North and off track. Jonathan got up from about 900 feet and sailed over my
head as I was caught low 1200 feet to the West of Labelle, it took about 40
minutes to get back to cloudbase. Jonathan got low at Alva about five miles from
the first turnpoint and was forced to land, less than half a mile to the West of
Jonathan I was getting a little low and spotted the only group of thermalling
birds I had spotted all day, I did not need a gilt edged invitation to join them
and scream to cloudbase. From here on it was a game of patience not overflying
the conditions and working almost every cloud as the Cu’s were more widespread
but all worked when you got to them.

David Lopez had approached the task from the opposite direction and we were
communicating as we were both running from opposite directions down 74, we met
up about midpoint. With the retrieve driver following me after picking up
Jonathan it made sense for David to turnaround and both of us work together on
the last third of the flight. We both got low just after we met and were
scratching in weak broken thermals, I found the core and since it was so small I
had to really put the glider on its wing tip to stay in the core and make some
height, I think this was the point that I scared David away and he never really
found a core to get him back to cloudbase. David continued to scratch between
2000 and 3000ft and eventually made it back to US29. I continued to fly
conservatively using and lift as I knew I had the Ridge with three more
thermals, on cue the lift continued to deliver under the clouds allowing me to
get back over the Ridge with over 2000ft. A flight of 5 hours and 45 minutes, one
really low save, over 6000ft at points in the flight, best thermal was 800ft per
minute with most averaging between 200 and 400ft/min.

Steve completed the flight in 4 hours 30 minutes. The free flyers at the Ridge,
Jon Small, Dave Epner, Bill, Felipe and other had an epic day with most getting
over three hours with some incredible climbs. Carlos Curti flying his Paraglider
managed to make it to Seebring launching from a 1000ft tow.

Flight Details:

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/894953