This weekend was race 2 in the Northern California XC League. A fun comp series put on by Jug and attended by people from the Bay Area, LA, and central coast.
The competition was at Dunlap, a tiny town in the Sierra foothills between Fresno and Sequoia National Park.
This was my first time to Dunlap, which is a shame, because the flying site is really sweet. A nice valley, lots of hilly features, great locals (Russ and Connie) and a funky 'resort'/campground right by launch to stay in.
Day one turned out nearly epic with good cloud development but plenty of blue sky and a very fun task picked by Jug, Eric Reed, Tim O'Neil and Tom Moock.
The task involved two major valley crossings and a dash out west to a feature out away from the major ranges (Bald Mountain).
I decided to race pretty hard, wanting badly to beat Jug, Tom and Tim and was generally rewarded for flying agressively.
Saturday I did screw myself a bit by leaving lift to take the first valley crossing a bit low. I was ahead of the field and in a good thermal and decided to get as much height as I could before the rest caught up, then I'd bail when they stop to circle, thereby keeping my lead.
It was a great tactic, and I made it across the valley well ahead of everyone else. Unfortuately, I needed the extra height and wasted my entire lead plus probably 10 minutes struggling low.
When I finally gave up and went to land I, of course, hit my save, got up, and headed back across the valley.
Luckily for me the lead gaggle was stalled on the far side of the valley working light lift on some bumps below the main ridge.
I was a little confused by this—from my angle it looked like they had plenty of height to bench to the main ridge where lift (and clouds) looked nicer.
I didn't waste time asking why they were hanging out, I just flew by several of them, and got the better lift.
Despite the time I'd made up I was still back in 4th place behind Eric, Jug and Tin. I didn't think I could catch Eric, but Jug and Tin had taken a wide line to the final turn point, choosing to follow the clouds.
I saw my chance to cut them off, and didn't think I needed anymore height, so I picked a straight line to the next turn point, aiming for the side of the cylinder closest to my line to goal.
Much to my surprise, Jug and Tin kept their line and I passed them easily—I'd now somehow made up a 10 minute deficit, or they'd squandered a 10 minute one.
As I neared the final turn-point I was surprised to see Eric going in deep. He appeared to be aiming for the far side of the cylinder. I thought maybe I had my proximity radius entered wrong, but decided to believe it.
If Eric kept his line I could actually catch him. To my surprise he kept going deeper, and very eager, I hit the turn point and without waiting to count my customary 3 seconds, I turned and found myself in an even race with Eric to goal.
He was directly above me and so close in the horizontal plane that I could see him or his glider.
In the end, his faster wing won out and he crossed goal 6 seconds ahead of me.
But hey, 2nd place by 6 seconds after having been at least 10 minutes behind was not a bad showing.
Thing is, I didn't realize how tight I'd made the turn at the last cylinder until Jug started scoring the tracks.
He called me over to show me a crazy track where someone had dropped a single point less than 5ft into a cylinder.
"Holy crap! That's amazing! Who was that?" I said.
"Don't know, let me look it up... Dork! It's you!" Jug answered.
Check it out—CompeGPS shows the point I placed at ".000miles" from the cylinder edge. Right at the limit of the GPS sensitivity:
When I looked over my track later I saw that not only did I cut this point so close, I tapped another cylinder on the course so tight that I only dropped TWO points inside, meaning I spent no more than 8 seconds in the cylinder.
I wish I could say I just that damn accurate, but I think I was just damn lucky that the interval on my GPS just happened to hit in time.
