PWC Loma Bola: Task 3

Day 3, Task 3 started very much like Task 2, with a lot of hopeful pilots on take-off and slightly better conditions. The task set was a 55km route to take us up and down the ridge several times before landing a little out in goal.

Looking at the conditions I had a feeling it was going to be much like yesterday with week thermals, patches of sunlight and lots of cloud cover.

The task committee was keen for us to get in the air asap and the race was set to start at 1PM. You may have noticed by now but I like to be on top of the gaggle, so I got myself as high as possible and waited patiently for the start.

The start pretty much repeated yesterday's, by the start time the thermals were weak and everyone was low. Most of the flight was like this with a lot of scratching along the ridge and waiting patiently in zeros for something, when a thermal did appear you were lucky to be going up +1m/s. If anything today was a test of patience for me and not about rushing to the next turn point.

Gradually more and more pilots were landing along the course as the day got weaker and about just 20 pilots made it past the 20km mark along the route. I thought my luck was in towards the end of the task when I was leading with another pilot and we found a +4m/s thermal. We turned in it to get as high as possible.

We both thought that this was our chance to win the task based on final glide and going the furthest distance - goal was not going to be a possibility for any pilots today. So we picked the best line we could find and glided out to our eventual landing spot thinking we had gone the furthest for the day.

About 25 minutes after landing we looked up to see the group of pilots that had been behind us gliding further than us on their final glide. In hind sight I could have stuck in a light thermal and waited for something else to appear. The sun had come back out when this group flew over head and they managed to find something with just a little more lift than we had done.

I feel today I flew pretty well given the light conditions and practised my patience by letting other pilots go and took a step back from pushing the gaggle. All in all, today I came out in 13th place which I'm happy with, although I am looking to improve on that place with the next tasks and hopefully we will all be making goal for the remaining days.

Overall I'm now sitting at 17th place which is great for my first World Cup. The past two tasks have certainly helped me see the tactics of comp flying and hanging back to observe can be just as beneficial for getting ahead as pushing out in front. I'm looking forward to practising this in the remaining days and of course having fun whilst flying with all the great pilots here.