Day three looked good.
Like all the other days.
Cumulus clouds stretching to the horizon like a soaring pilots dream come true.
And the lift on Pico de Ibituruna was great. Cloudbase at about 1500 meters.

The start of the task led the pilots to postition themselves to the East of the mountain about 10 km away. This positioned them to be upwind of the start and the first turnpoint.

As team leader my routine has been to launch everybody and then after all the competitors have flown I get to jump with the free-flyers. Depending upon the length of the task I usually have time for about a half an hour flight before landing to go on retrieve.
Yesterday the meet organizers allowed us (the free flyers) off a little early so I flew for about 1/2 an hour.
Then Len reported that they were rounding the first turnpoint. Uh oh, they were moving fast so I spiraled out of the sky, through the strong lift, and jumped into the car with Robson to head for the next turnpoint which was at a small town called Era Nova that the highway to Rio runs through. .

When we got there sure enough we could see the gaggles in the distance, coming our way.
The clouds looked good still.
But the gaggle approached excruciatingly slowly. The closer they got to the turnpoint the slower they went and the bluer the sky got. Before they arrived there was a blue hole all around the turnpoint.

Finally the gliders started dribbling past the turnpoint but despite the fact that there were at least 100 gliders on search very little lift was found and soon the sky was raining paragliders. They were landing everywhere around the turnpoint.
They lit next to the road, on the hillsides, in small pastures and even on the road itself. Robson went up to a bend in the highway to warn the traffic and slow it down as the gliders fell from the sky.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, about 10 gliders got away in one group and about 7 in another. But none of the rest of the field could get more than a km past Era Nova.
Goal was only about 12 Km away, on the downwind, but only four or five gliders made it in.
Frank Brown of Brasil was first to goal.

Josh, Len, and Eric all landed at Era Nova for a reasonable score for the day. Kari landed about 9 km short of Era Nova and Cherie was back another 4.5 km.

Kari was in deep. Her retrieve included a ride in a horse drawn cart. Good thing because the river that she had to ford would´ve been about chest deep. She walked for several hours in the heat as Robson and I tried to reach her position. Finally she got a ride to the highway as Robson and I explored some rather rural areas of the country side.

The US team is currenly in 10th but poised to come on strong in the days ahead.

Day 4 has dawned with clear skies and scattered cumulus clouds. Looks like another good day.

I´ve taken some more pictures but am hampered by an internet connection that is slower yesterdays gaggle and haven´t been able to upload them. I will try a different connection this evening.

Jeff