The forecast was for winds out of the southwest at 10 mph. When we
got to launch the winds were light with the ground shaded by a thin line of
cirrus heading off to our west southwest.

We got the sport class off first along with the early birds and then the ordered
launch. I hung on the tow line until 2,000' AGL, (3,300') as there didn't seem
to be much lift around. I worked weak lift downwind to the east of my pin off
point and then further east found more weak lift until coming back up wind and
to the north found 265 fpm on average to 6,100'.

Unfortunately given the weak lift and strong 13 mph southwest wind I was now
just outside the start cylinder with a lot of other pilots and ten minutes to go
before the start and really not that high compared with other days and the
forecast for 11,000' top of lift. So I again pushed up wind as we almost all did
and found weak lift (55 fpm) to 6,200', but again outside the start cylinder
with six minutes to go.

There were plenty of pilots who launched earlier and were higher, so it seemed
like the thing to do was to go back up wind and find a better thermal and climb
up to them. This would not end well.

All I found was weak lift and got back to 5,800' as the first start clock
opened. Then the second, and then the third. With each weak climb I topped out
lower and lower and things were just going to hell in a hand basket.

Funny but Jonny was right next to me for a long time and I wondered how it was
that he was down low with me and wasn't climbing out. He was doing what I was
doing which was searching and often just hanging in weak lift just to stay up.

Near the third clock Zac joined us and then he was soon way below me and Jonny
and I headed west to get under what looked like a reasonable thermal given the
two guys turning in it. There were plenty of pilots higher back to the east
downwind of us. But no one was very high, at least that I could see.

The thermal turned out not to work much for me. I saw Zac way below head out to
the shaded area to the north. I decided to head south toward the sunny side. I
was at 1,200' and Zac looked really low.

I headed for the hot looking fields just east of the Francisco Grande but got
nothing. Down to 600' AGL I headed for the launch area on the western side and
landed in a strong southwestern wind.

Other stories can be found here on Replay:
https://airtribune.com/play/1936/2d

Kelly Myrkle writes about the sport class task which had the first two
turnpoints of the open class task:

I made goal today. It was a very tough day for climbing. The lift
was scattered, broken and ratty. The winds were a bit strong today so that meant
the thermals would have a lot of drift to them. For a lot of the flight it
seemed like I was just trying to hang on to what ever lift I could find no
matter how weak and just get blown down the course line. I only had a couple of
climbs today that really went up fast and I thought "Hey I actually know what
I'm doing". Most of the time I felt like I was just trying to maximize every
little piece of lift that was thrown at me. The Gecko seems to be able to turn
nothing into something as I slowly climbed out from almost landing a few times.

During today's flight I was on my to turn point two and got low. After searching
and searching I finally found a solid 100ftpm up. I started to relax and focus
on staying in this sweet solid thermal. Two hawks were climbing out with me just
checking me out and then left. I took a sip of my water when out of no where I
hear a familiar sound. It was a Blackhawk helicopter beating the air into
submission and he was heading right at me.

We were pretty close to the same altitude with the air beater being close enough
to me that my danger Will Robinson alarm went off. As soon as I saw him I banked
hard to the right to flash my bright green under surface at him. He must have
saw me then because he banked hard and pulled up to avoid me. I pointed into the
wind and stuffed the bar as deep as it would go to run from the rotor wash that
I was certainly coming for me. I flew fast and away for what seemed like long
enough for the wash to clear and then turned around to head back into the lift.
That was the closest I have ever been to a powered aircraft except for towing
behind dragonflies and trikes. I can only imagine what the chopper Pilot was
thinking once he saw me. Hang gliders can be are hard to see in the air.

The rest of the flight was pretty relaxed as I tagged the second turn point and
then drifted in light lift all the way to goal. What a fun, frustrating, scary
for a second, challenging day. Too bad not all Wednesdays aren't this good.