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Vidalia, Georgia was very welcoming with the
Yumion coming
out to the airport to greet us. We've had great press response wherever we have
flown to. The Cloudbase Foundation, which has raised $3,000 from the pilots at
the competition, gave two grants of $1,000 each to young cancer and accident
victims in Vidalia.

The airport as very welcoming and we again were able to launch from pavement,
this time one of the runways. The winds were forecasted to be out of the west
southwest. The forecast was also for 6,000' to 7,000' cloud base and 500 to 600
fpm lift.

The task committee struggled to try to get us a way to fly to the beach, but it
was too difficult to get around Savannah airspace and land at the south end of
Hilton Head. They then chose a 181 kilometer task to Walterboro, South Carolina
from Vidalia, Georgia. I made one more look at the prognosis and brought up the
point that the sea breeze would be kicking in and by five o'clock it would be
making it very difficult to get to Walterboro. We needed a goal a little further
inland. Walterboro was fifty kilometers from the coast.

We had a goal field at Allendale and it was eighty six kilometers from the
coast. It was also likely to be affected by the sea breeze and the convergence,
but perhaps less so and later than Walterboro. It was 136 kilometer task.

The cu's were a little late showing up so even though I launched with the first
ten pilot I wasn't off the ground until 1:12 for a two o'clock start window. I
was behind Bobby Bailey so I pinned off early at 1,300' and found only 100 fpm. 
The lift was weak all around the airport as pilots struggled to stay up. It
wasn't until seventeen minutes after I launched that I joined a few pilots in a
thermal that was going up at almost 500 fpm.

We found good lift after that and about twenty of us were able to make the first
start clock at 6,500'. There were plenty of nice cu's ahead so the race was on.

I hooked up with Kraig Coomber, Carl Wallbank, Filippo Oppici, and Alex
Trivelato. Carl was high and often unseen by the rest of us, but that meant he
was often in the lead. We would all spread out and pilots definitely used each
other to find the lift and then to find better cores.

The lift was strong and the cu's well spaced. Carl told me later that he felt
that we missed the best cores, but I was thinking that we were going fast,
finding good lift, and getting high.

I started out on top except for Karl but three quarters of the way into our fast
eighty kilometer run together I got a bit lower and behind. The four of them
found some lift in front of me and I noticed that it was weak. I went in under
them and kept going as I knew I had to find better lift to catch up. I found
600+ average through the thermal to 7,600'. The others quickly joined me and we
all came back closer together.

After hitting core after core and racing at 60 mph over the ground, we went on a
nineteen kilometer glide without finding lift. As we approached the town of
Sylvania it was clear that the sea breeze had come in ahead. You could see the
increased moisture (water vapor) in the air. The cu's were dying on our right
(to the south).

Carl pushed ahead into the almost cloudless sky with the others behind and
below. Just before the town I turned left and headed north for the much better
clouds to the left of the course line. We had been up to five kilometers south
of the line. I would get up to fifteen kilometers north of the course line going
to the better clouds.

There were cirrus clouds covering the course line and suppressing the lift. The
sky was blue to the north up above the cumulus clouds. I searched around over
forested areas and down to 2,500' found the lift and climbed to 5,500' at almost
300 fpm. Good lift, but half of what we experienced on most of the course.

I noticed that the convergence was to the north as forecasted earlier. Also the
wind shifted from west to south. There were dark bottomed cu's ahead while to
the south there weren't any clouds.

Carl, Kraig, Filippo and Alex didn't go down as I had feared, but they struggled
in the weak lift along  the course line as I headed north away from it. Joe
Bostik and Pete Lehmann were just behind me and north of the course line also,
but not as far north as I. Joe said that he was down to 1,300' forty kilometers
out. I was working weak lift thirty four kilometers out and down to 1,600'. Joe
found good lift and climbed to 7,000' to go on final glide.

I was working over a large cleared area that was becoming shaded from towering
cu's just to my west.  The Georgia/South Carolina border was approaching
with a river and ten kilometers of forest. I was too low to see if there were
any landing areas within the forest. Moving northwest along the edge of the
forest I found 250 fpm and climbed to 5,600'. The was enough to make it to the
next landing areas if needed.

I glided sixteen kilometers to the other side where I headed for the highway
where Pete told me he had found lift. I found broken 100 fpm at 1,800'. I kept
getting dumped out of the thermal. There were a few buzzards nearby and I used
them to find a core, but that didn't seem to work.

Finally, I felt that I had enough height to make it to the goal from six
kilometers out. As soon as I went on glide I found 400 to 500 fpm lift. Why
couldn't the birds have showed me this earlier?

Only a few pilots made it to goal with Joe, Pete and I communicating well for
the first time during the competition. Curt Warren was the fastest into goal
arriving first after taking the second clock. But his vario snapped off fifty
kilometers from goal and he had to rely on assistance from Jonny Durand to find
lift and make it in. He doesn't have a track log because he lost his instrument.

Carl, Kraig, and Fillippo made it in squeaking into the goal at 16:1. Paris made
it in an hour late without a working VG on his Combat. He had been told about
the problem and didn't fix it, so he suffered his own fate. Reminds me of the
time in Zapata when his VG didn't work when he was flying with Manfred on the
day of the World Record and he could fly "only" 300 miles.

Thursday's flight
here.

Friday's flight
here.