The morning was clear, the winds light and the ground complete soaked after 5 days of rain. It was going to be some interesting flying. The task called was 60k with 3 possible start times 30 minutes apart. The winds were blowing up or down each of the launches at one time or another, and pilots were placing their bets as to which one to que on. I started on the west launch, gave up and went to the north launch. No one was getting up and few if any were launching. I hucked off the north as soon as I got there because I was sick of this shit and the first start time had already passed. I went down like a brick and got a ride back up, comforted that I would not need to try the north again. The south launch had some action with a small, tight gaggle churning right in front of launch, combined with more and more pilots launching into it, fun. The rest of the pilots were running all over the place like their heads were on fire and their asses was catchin’ trying to figure out which launch to set up on, me included. I decided to go back to the west launch and wait as it was less crowded. The second start time had passed, and no one was more than 300 ft over the top of Bora. It finally starts to turn on a little with the last start at 3:15pm, and by some miracle we actually climb to base and start the task. The first turnpoint is some god forsaken hole we were warned was really sinky, but now the sinky hole has a couple of feet of standing water in it to make even more sinky if that was possible. 150 gliders crawl of the end of the ridge to the first TP and into certain sinkout doom, or so I thought. If I’ve learned anything while competing on paragliders is to never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. We all fly into the wet hole and actually get the turnpoint and climb out. We make it back to launch and get to cloudbase in the best thermal of the day. We then head to another seemingly impossible TP en mass. Kari and I are flying together, Josh and Tom are ahead having gotten to base on the last cloud on the ridge heading to the next TP, their position and timing was perfect. They make the turnpoint with enough altitude to get back into the low hills leading to the final turnpoint. They both make goal in the top 5. We are a little to late and too slow to make it in. Kari gets a little further than me and we both land short of the final TP but it was way further that I thought we would get anyway. All in all not a bad day with around 30 in goal.

Bill