Kevin Carter <<xckevinc>>
writes:

Cory was pretty far off course line but used this sweet
convergence to get back up and charge to goal.

Cory writes:

Day 5 of the competition is in the bag. I had my second longest
flight ever. 193 kilometers or 120 miles. I was last into goal (by the time I
hour there everyone else was packed up and home). I did a bad job of navigating
and ended up 20 kilometers off course and hemmed in by some bad terrain with no
retrieve options. At that point I still had around 37 kilometers to go and I was
only had about 2500 feet of altitude.

I knew I couldn't make it across the badlands (which were were warned about and
which I promptly forgot about) so I turned around and headed back upwind to try
to land next to a road. On the way back I hit a 300 fpm thermal at 1400 feet AGL
so I started turning. I gradually gained altitude while the sky started looking
really good above me.

Long story short, I was in a convergence zone and got all the way back to 10,500
feet msl (8000 feet above ground level). From that altitude I was able to glide
30 kilometers into goal!