Dan Watters fill us in…
By 9:30am there was 7 hangies on launch at Geary’s (Dan W, Nic W, Thief, John D, Bobby, Michael I, Geoff R, Johnno W), rubbing their eyes at the early start and waiting for the hoards of punters to stuff their washing away.
The Thief was the first to take to the air, buzzing the punters in hang whilst attempting to hump his base bar like a dog. The increasing wind strength and Thief’s maniacal laugh was enough to send ‘em packing.
Nic and others joined him shortly afterwards, heading north. Launching 5 minutes behind, I found a thermal almost immediately and took it to 3,500ft… at 9:45am!
I watched the Old Farts Flying Brigade of Bob, Michael, and John launch a good thousand feet below me.
Converting my height to speed, I caught Nic and the Thief at the second rest stop with the Thief already corkscrewing up. I joined the thermal and we hit cloudbase at 4,200ft, now only 10am. The blanket of cloud from the overnight seabreeze was starting to breakup into streets coming from the NE. John joined us at cloudbase and we all pushed headwind, with the Thief and I skirting the edge of the cloud street, and ducking underneath to top up occasionally. John took a more easterly route. We all reached the other side of the lake before racing back to the second rest-stop to find the resident thermal still pumping.
By 10:30am cloudbase had lifted to 4,500, and the clouds were breaking up even more. Everyone was hooking lift left, right and centre. The day was looking awesome. My initial thoughts were to hang at the ridge for another hour, by which time the whole place would be pumping, the cloud would have lifted further and the prospects for a super XC would be seriously on the cards. Just as Nic joined our thermal, the Thief topped out 100ft above me and declared his intention to go on glide. In the excitement, I abandoned the plan to wait and decided to join him so we could spread out and find lift together.
A couple of turns later I was at base and on glide. Wisps of cloud obscured my view of the Thief. I decided to stick to the breaking street. The ridge was chopping the street up, and soon enough I was getting low near the next ridge to the west of the lake. The Thief’s luck wasn’t much better and he radioed in that he was hitting the deck near Dick’s place. My line proved only marginally better, and I drifted in zeros long enough to get me over the next ridge and landed just near the Gundaroo tip shortly after 11am, I was close enough to the pub to smell the beer.
Back at the ridge all the other dudes were having heaps of fun with everyone topping out and flying sorties out over the lake.
After packing up I strolled into the Gundaroo pub at 11:56am, and was delighted to be served a frosty beverage several minutes before the official opening time. The beers and banter with the locals flowed with the rest of the lads joining us for a counter lunch, retrieving the Thief en route. I let the beers cloud my vision of the clouds which only seemed to be getting better and better. The season has well and truly arrived!
Dan.
