The results: http://soaringspot.com/2009ecc

Tweets: http://ozreport.com/tweets.php

http://skyout.blogspot.com/

http://gottafly.blogspot.com/

The task (40 km), to the north west:

The forecast was for southwest winds up to 14 knots at 2,000' with light lift (300-400 fpm) to 3,000' to 4,000'. A forecast for weaker conditions than the day before with no cu's once again. With the westerly winds we were also concerned about the sea breeze so we thought about launching at noon but later based on the reports from the tug pilots we pushed it back to 1 PM.

I was pulled up after a couple of sport class pilots ten minutes after the launch window opened and there was plenty of lift right as we got into the air. I reported back that I had lift and pilots ran to their gliders to get ready to go.

I found plenty of light lift inside the 5 km start circle and climbed to 3,400' with Mark Frutiger, Dan, Larry Bunner and a couple of other pilots. With the wind blowing at 11 mph out of the west southwest, I had to go back toward the launch to stay within the start cylinder. We all had to stay inside the 5 km start cylinder for 50 minutes.

More and more pilots were hauled up and We kept running back to the gaggles closer to the airstrip to stay up. We were struggling at 2,400' after getting much higher earlier, but there was plentiful lift, even if it was weak.

With four minutes to go I headed back to get inside the start cylinder again and toward a couple of pilots who were thermaling well. I left about twenty pilots behind just outside the start circle. Before I got to the small gaggle I found better lift and climbed to 2,800' (this had been the pattern during our stay in the start circle). Larry Bunner was with me and when the lift petered out we headed out parallel to the course line.

Sunny Venesky had seen us hit the good lift and had come in under us 300' below. He continued circling and drifting east as we headed out one minute after the start window opened at little more to the north.

Three kilometers out I found 66 fpm and we hung in it for a few minutes while Sunny worked 6 fpm a little over a kilometer to our south. Larry mentioned the pilots circling behind us, as we were leading the gaggle out, but we didn't go back to them. Sunny was now 300' over us as we just maintained.

We left the 66 fpm and headed north toward the course line and toward a quarry and large brown fields that looked like they were heating up. It looked wet with broken up fields along our original course line to the south of the actual course line, so I wanted to shade back over the river and toward the drier looking fields, hoping to find better lift.

Sunny found 80 fpm a few kilometers to our south as we turned north. He was now 600' higher than we were and we were down to 2,000'. He climbed out to 3,200' as we didn't find any more lift and landed with three other pilots at about the same time in the large brown field.

Sunny then flew to the north as we had, went over a dump to see if he could find lift and finding none, went to a few circling pilots that were out in front of him as he had proceeded so cautiously. He joined them in their thermal at 1,500' and climbed out at 43 fpm to 2,000'. When he left the thermal he was back down to 1,800'. Larry and I watched that gaggle, which was over the field next to ours as we broke down our gliders.

Going north again and getting to the course line, Sunny down to 900' found a thermal that averaged 194 fpm to 3,600'. That was enough to go on glide to goal around the turnpoint. The wind was lined up right with the course line (as intended) and so when Sunny and Jim Messina were circling up they drifted right along the course line toward the turnpoint.

#	Pilot	Glider	Time	Distance km	Total Points
1.	Sunny Venesky	Aeros Combat L 15	00:57:48	40.6	558
2.	Jim Messina	Moyes Litespeed 5	01:05:04	40.6	525
3.	John Simon	Aeros Combat		36.7	401
4.	Paris Williams	Aeros Combat L 13		32.5	372
5.	John Chambers	Aeros Combat		24.4	315

Goal, a paved runway GA airport, was apparently very windy as Sunny had a scary landing. There were trees upwind of the runway.