The Race and Rally format presents us with "interesting" flights. Today the task
was to fly to Moultrie, Georgia from Live Oak, Florida. The wind was forecasted
to be 5 to 9 mph west. The task was to first fly west northwest to a safety
turnpoint to keep us out of a swamp and away from airspace, then fly northwest
to  Moultrie airport. The wind strength and direction varied, but it was
headwind all the way.

Mick Howard towed me to what I thought was a strong thermal so I pinned off
early and then promptly proceeded to miss the thermal. After searching around in
lift that averaged zero I headed upwind to where other pilots much higher than I
had gone. Down to less than 600' AGL, I found a small bit of lift next to the
runway and just hung in there as it increased to 200 fpm to 3000'.

I worked patches of lift averaging about 100 fpm as I worked my way upwind to
the edge of the start cylinder with a 6 to 8 mph head wind. Ten minutes before
the first start gate I finally found some good lift and got up to cloud base at
4,300', which made for a good start.

With better lift, 250 to 300 fpm, we all worked our way west against the wind. I
took the lead early but then quickly lost it missing  a climb as I went
further south after hearing from Bruce. I got back together with John Simon and
Felix and we made a good run to the turnpoint.

Zac and Jonny, who started twenty minutes after us, caught us just after the
turnpoint, so it was clear that we were struggling with the headwind and lack of
really strong lift.

I pushed upwind further than many if not all pilots going 5 kilometers to the
west of the course line and flying the east/west cloud streets. I could see the
swamp to our north and wanted to be sure that I stayed over landable fields and
near retrieve roads. I was often low and not getting very high. I was also on my
own.

Around 4:30 PM we came into an area of few clouds near the town of Quitman. Lift
was down to 100 fpm and the west wind was 10 mph.  There were quite a few
pilots around and we were all searching and sampling. Little wispies would pop
up and we would head for them.

I pushed forward and down to 750' found 250 fpm over a cropped field. That got
me back to 3,000'. I pressed forward again and then saw Jonas circling up from
800' just to my north and joined him in 300 fpm to 4,500'.

Jonas sprinted ahead as I took a more cautious line upwind of him to some
smaller cu's while he went under a big one but too low and landed. Still I was
only able to get back to 2,400' before I had to push into the wind again.

The clouds were returning and I headed for some small ones. Down to 1,100' AGL I
worked a row of trees upwind of open fields in light sink pushing north to see
if there was a better thermal coming off a small field just upwind. There was
and it was 300 fpm .

Larry Bunner came over me (we were in radio contact) and I climbed up with
another pilot. At 4,300' we headed toward some thick cu's to the northwest.
Larry was already there and going up. A pilot lower than us was working his way
up also just downwind of us. I thought I recognized the harness. I went over
toward him and sure enough I could see the Red Bull billboard on the bottom
surface coming through the Technora top surface. It was Jonny Durand. I hadn't
been as slow as I had thought after the turnpoint.

We were going up at 660 fpm and I was the highest glider in the best thermal of
the day. This meant that I had to leave first as we were quickly at cloud base.
I just escaped the cloud at 5,600' and headed on course. But this was a problem.

We were twenty kilometers from goal and I had positive numbers with an 11:1
glide required to make it but with the headwind I would not get that good a
glide. The smart thing to do at this point would have been to wait for thirty
seconds and join up with Larry and Jonny.

They took a course to the right toward more good looking cu's, while I headed
for not such nice looking ones on course. Those cu's turned out to not work. I
even turned ninety degrees upwind to get under more of them and at 6 PM they
were just not working.

Jonny and Larry found good lift under the clouds to the right and with a little
help from a forming cloud made it to goal. Jonny broke the Wills Wing streak of
eight day wins in a row.

The results from day 3:
http://soaringspot.com/2015frr/results/flex/daily/day3.html

Cumulative:
http://soaringspot.com/2015frr/results/flex/total/day3.html

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/flightinfo.html?flightId=1868384582

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/para/getScoring.html?scoringId=319

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/1164046

http://wxc.fai.org/module.php?id=22&date=20150304&gliderclass=hg1

http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:davisstraub/19.5.2015/16:40

http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/ranking-hg-open/