Ahem, this is kind of embarrassing. And I swear it has never happened before.

I bombed out.

Sky looked great. Puffy clouds blue patches for the first time, even birds soaring.

So I hucked first.

And I chased the birds on the cliffs and sank.

So I flew over the rocky point (into the wind and sinking) where the birds were circling.

And I sank.

And I flew out to some clouds.

And I sank.

And I landed.

Minimum distance. Last place today!

Yee haw!!!

Gotta say, G.V. is not my favorite place to fly. Might even be my least favorite.

Ah well, tonight I'll check out the clubs and get drunk.

Tomorrow to Rio!

This morning didn't look promising—wet ground and launch buried in cloud. But one thing I've learned about this place, the clouds generally lift, maybe not above launch, but high enough to get a low base task in.

Today the task was 25k out to the north west, and 25k back, with a short dog-leg to the LZ for about 51k.

I had an excellent start and stuck with a large lead gaggle about halfway to the turnpoint. But I got impatient turning in zeros, and maybe even a little down, with 40 aggressive pilots and made an unwise dash out for sunlight.

I got low and joined a few other desperate pilots and the 4 of us eventually scratched our way back to base. Unfortunately, by the time we hit base we were a good 6km off course, making my adventure a 12k detour.

And of course in the meantime, the lead gaggle did in fact climb out at reach the turnpoint.

Oh well.

I put on some speed and glided into the turnpoint to join up with about 10 gliders and work our way back to the launch ridge.

From that point it was a bit of a death march with extremely slow climbs (50ft/m maybe) followed by sinky glides, and another slow climb.

Each climb we lost 2 or 3 gliders as the day cooled and the climbs became more and more difficult to cling to.

I hung on until the last thermal, falling out the bottom with two other pilots. The remain two gliders in our group went about 4km further than us before dirting themselves.

It wasn't a great day, but at least there was some flying.

I finished 57th, just in the top half for the day.

This has not been a stellar comp by any measure—week conditions and less than spectacular piloting.

I did learn a bunch about slow and light climbs. The Boomerang 6 does pretty well in them.

And Brad Gunnuscio from the states took 2nd place.

Ok, so today we got a task off in much worse conditions than our cancelled day yesterday.

But it was, IMHO, totally bogus. A 36.6km downwind run with maybe 30 people literally launching through cloud while it was drizzling on launch.

I waited for conditions to 'improve', meaning that you could launch without flying through cloud right off launch.

While waiting we had some excitement with a series of sketchy low-to-no wind launches on the south side (think short runway and big cliff).

One competitor launched apparently unclipped. I don't have the full story yet, be it appears he was able to hang on by grasping over his flight deck straps. He flew very smartly, aiming for some low trees on a sloping, but not overly steep, section of the launch ridge, well away from the rocky cliff. He landed in the trees and reported back that he was ok.

After watching that, I decided to launch and take whatever the day gave me. At first I thought it would be invalid, with no one making it make past a single 5km glide. But as I was setting up I could see that the first group, the cloud launchers, had found a weak thermal and were climbing to base. With the short task, one or two climbs would be enough to go the minimum 25k and maybe even to goal.

Unfortunately, high cloud shaded the field for the rest of us, with most people making between 5 and 10km, my self included at 7.7km

Sooo, 3 tasks--including today's, which with a bunch in goal, will be a 1000 point fully valid day--and not a race yet.

Kinda bogus.

Here's hoping for some real weather and real racing for our last two days!

It was rainy this morning and looking bad. The organizers cancelled the task before we went up the hill, around 9am.

It was a bit early to cancel—most meets we'll wait at least a few hours to see if weather changes. Yesterday, we delayed the busses an hour, but for whatever reason they called it.

So Bill Hughes and I went to the gym and worked out for about an hour. When we came out, it was sunny and the sky was full of puffy clouds. Oops.

With the task already cancelled there was no way to have a race, but the organizers sent a bus to launch and maybe 20 of us flew.

Base was very low, about 1200m (just 100m or so above launch), and lift was light at first.

After flying around south side of the launch ridge for a while, I decided to bail around to the north side (the usual launch area, and toward to LZ in town). I was afraid of rotor so I didn't get too close to the ridge, but around the bend a large cloud was forming and a bunch of local vultures (uruburu) were at base.

I flew in under them at got the best lift I've had in G.V. yet, maybe 5m/s, and climbed quickly to base.

Even better, the cloud was surfable and I climbed up the side of it to maybe 1450m, the highest I've been in G.V. so far...

From there I flew south again and linked up with pilots on the south side to push out for a little XC.

We flew maybe 10km, half-way to the town of Alpercata, and climbed back to base. As we were circling I spotted (hard to miss) a huge downpour about 30km away (guessing) and moving toward us from the north-west. And then I felt a few sprinkles.

I'm guessing there wasn't any danger, but I didn't want to get wet, or find out how the Boom6 handles in a gust front, so I turned around and headed back to town.

I stopped for a little lift on the way, but still arrived with tons of height.

So I tested out the B6 in asym-spirals. It doesn't wind up as fast as the B5 (with shorter 08 lines)—I'm thinking the lines may be longer. But it does the job.

So all in all a very nice flight—with one problem... For some reason I keep having brain farts when reading wind-socks. I know it's simple: they point the way the wind is blowing!

But, I got confused and decided the wind sock points into the wind and set up too low—I expected a downwind glide, then turn, crab, and land.

Instead I crossed the river to the LZ into the wind and dropped.

Nothing to do but commit and aim for the closest piece of shore.

Thank goodness for the improved glider of the Boomerang 6, I made it, barely. Dry, and the glider is dry.

There were people in the LZ to see it. No cheers. No one screaming 'Água!' just a few shaking heads!

Low cloudbase, several hundred feet below launch.

We hung out on launch in the fog for a few hours discussing politics and gliders (the usual ;-) before the day was cancelled.

To avoid the hour drive back down the hill, most of us flew a sledder under the clouds to the town's LZ.

Brad Gunnuscio and I did a little glide test of the Boomerang 6 and Icepeak 3. The Icepeak seemed to glide a little better, but it was far from a scientific test.

Another overcast day in G.V. It was my first experience with the famous G.V. .5m/s thermals. Yup, thats less than 100ft/m and today that was a good thermal.

There was a lot of groveling. A lot of circles for very little altitude. And ~2hrs of flying for 23km!

No one made goal. So far the best I've heard in 25k.

Here's hoping the weather gets better! The town's been friendly, the food good, but the flying? So far this place is the anti-Owens, on the upside that means green, lush, and beautiful. The downside is infuriatingly slow thermals and veeerrrry conservative flying.

This has to be one of the largest American representations ever at a PWC. Unfortunately, we didn't exactly shine today...

I launched myself into a bush after catching a photographer in my tip (hey! he was inside the no-people zone!). Fortunately, as I was climbing up to relaunch, the winner of last weeks Governador Valadares Open launched into the same bush. To make me feel better I'm sure.

Once in the air, the field of 150 of the world's best pilots boated around under a big cloud at base for about an hour until start.

The start came, and we all went on glide toward turn-point 1. Most of us went the direct-ish line, which was shaded over, but so was the area around the start, and it was lifting. Well, this wasn't. About half the field, including myself, Bill Hughes, Jack Brown and Matt Dadam, glided around 10km and dirted just past the first point.

A more daring crew went way off course to follow the sun, but they had to crawl back into the shade to get the point and mostly dirted there. Some after, some before.

BUT two pilots got away and flew 60km and 35km respectively—which means it could actually be a high scoring day...

In other news, the Boomerang 6 is flying beautifully. Climbs and glides beautifully—and it's fast. Seems stable enough, no tip problems. Of course conditions here are light...

Looking forward to a little more flying tomorrow and maybe a bit better than a 15km flight!