David Whittle <<david.whittle>>
writes:

Saturday 13th of Feb 2016, the first real cross country day of
2016 at the Florida Ridge. The wind was about 10mph out of the North, North
West. Initial plans for a cross wind out and return to Labelle for an easy
retrieve vanished when the cloud streets were developing to the South East and
the sky was blue to the west.

Roger was off first, followed by Leo, then myself followed by Glen. Leo was
already at cloudbase - 4K to the east of the field when I started to work the
thermal that Derreck dropped me. Roger was working below me in the space between
the office and the monkey farm. Roger was climbing but much slower than myself
and I was soon at cloudbase.

Leo came over to my cloud and when we were both at base we decided to head off
to the South East, with a goal at the junction of 75 and the Miccosukee Reserve
road SR833. This flight had been planned for over three years, first with
Jonathan Boarini, who moved to Vegas and now with Leo.

While there are plenty of landing options for 2/3rds of the flight there are
certain areas where the landing options are far from the main road and behind
water obstacles and locked gates. The initial glide and finding thermals was
easy going with the back quadrant of the clouds working well. The sky was lively
with strong sink, strong lift and the occasional wire slap somewhere on the edge
of it all. The couple of strong wire slaps I experienced had me pulling the bar
in with a vice grip on the bar.

After the first couple of thermals we found ourselves separated, with Leo going
further to the east and over the main north south road 833, I remained to the
west of the road as I was joining the clouds with relative ease. As we hit the
junction of 833 and 846, we went a little further south than desired and at this
point we were both together with Leo at 1800feet and me at 2900ft.

From where I was positioned I could see the road that was essentially our route
to the north and east, where Leo was positioned he could not identify the road
and was in survival mode in the middle of an orange grove with no easy retrieve.
This was the last time we were together, Leo managed to scratch his way out and
headed eventually on CR846 towards Immokalee, he made it about seven miles to
the west and landed behind a locked gate, making an eventful retrieve at sunset.

Once I escaped this area it was back to gliding and thermaling with most clouds
still providing some degree of lift from 200 to 400 ft/min. I spotted a
paraglider as I was heading towards the only village in the area he was around
2000ft and maintaining as he drifted over the northwest quadrant of the village.
The ground below me started to get more unfriendly, water and swamp more typical
of the everglades, as I was heading parallel with Snake Road. I hope the name of
the road was due to its winding nature rather than the inhabitants, below as I
was getting lower than I wanted to be with no real climbs.

There was a nice looking landing field near some tanks on the side of the road.
With enough height to make my landing field if required, I was able to relax and
get back to finding a thermal to get me to goal. I found a couple of nice
thermals that had me to goal with a couple of thousand feet.

Getting down was actually quite hard with thermals kicking off all over the
area. I was above Alligator Alley (I75). I had plenty of thermals but nowhere to
go as there is no landing areas for 30 miles south, east or west and Fort
Lauderdale ATZ to the east.

An uneventful landing into a 7mph wind on a large excavated field was the end to
a great 2hours and 18 minutes in the air and 83km. Between, Glenn, Dave Epner
and my brother John I was able to get a retrieve and later to pick up Leo.

This flight was dedicated to the memory of Denis Stone our long time retrieve
driver who knew every back road in South Florida. Denis passed away at the end
of 2015. We really did not know how easy we had it when we would call Denis and
hear those reassuring words, I know where you are, I'm on my way.

Leo's Track - My point two in the track above is where we split, which is just
above the furthest point South for Leo.

Leo's Flight data.