Making the best of it

With everyone worrying about the effect of the fire - Cornelius plans how to USE it (photo from the March Gauntlet).

Just goes to show how one man's meat is another man's poison!

What follows is a report of another day were we made the best of it.


Only Ed pitched for the weather briefing at 09h00 - somehow everyone seemed to figure the 8/8 cloud was going to be the story for the day, but how wrong you can be!

By 10h00 it had burnt off, gone largely blue and there were clearly thermals under teh inversion - at this stage at about 3500ft. The forecast was for excellent instability (the approaching front was very clearly visible in Cape Town ("waiting" for the day to pass so that it could come through in the evening - notice how often the fronts get in phase with the day so thet always pass through in late evening?) after a morning of inversion, lights winds and 'softer' thermals.

After some initial end-game-tennis we settled on 33 and Adriaan took the fist launch (12h45), immediately followed by X32. Herbie disagreed with me that "Jan du Toits" always works in a SW, and as I launched there I had the opportunity to test this - not for long though (it wasn't working). I only just made the jump to Waaihoek (having the biggest BUMP I have ever experienced in the lee of Waaihoek and I sometimes wonder how it all holds together when the weather is that severe.

We climbed on Waaihoek to 4500ft and could see the inversion below the top of Saronberg - thick and unappetizing looking. We discussed options and eventually decided that there was no point in hanging around - and jumped Mitchell's saddle to Witzenberg which was working but quite soft and needed us to trickle along. X32 did not have enough height to jump into 24 rivers so we used the Saron Gap to Porterville. The Portville soft but carrying and we made it to Renosterhoek and back but it was sweaty stuff being close in an as slow as we dared.

I took a climb (unusually) at the south end of the Porterville ridge and a long glide to the Witzenberg. Adriaan struggled with the jump because he missed the climb, but we both got established on the Witzenberg. I again took a high climb at Waaihoek to jump to Keeromberg - the sink was really severe. Adriaan bailed at this point not wanting to risk a land out on Kylie's birthday.

The ridge to Swellendam was cooking but a little rough and I should not have attempted the corner - I started round the corner at 4500ft (high for X32 but it was quite westerly and without the extra the trailer would have earned some more trackmiles). I turned at 100km and made it back around the coner down to just over 3000ft, buit quickly regained the top and it was cooking all the way to Keeromberg.

It was now 17h00 and the front ridge was clearly cooking in the pre-frontal instability. I elected to try and make the jump to Waaihoek by climbing to 5800ft on Keeronberg. But it was mostly heavy sink along Brandwag and I was down to nearly 3000ft at Jan du Toits - which was now working Herbie! - and climbed high for the jump to Waaihoek.

I can honestly say I have not had a more difficult day (these jumps were brutal) making around the corner (Keerom to Waaihoek and vice versa) and Adriaan certainly had a similar experience - it is interesting to me that these days (where there is NO chance of a 1000 are often the ones where you really learn stuff or use all your knowledge). My method for rounding the corner (Keerom to Waaihoek) is to climb high and then fly the risge as though it was working - hoping (as usually happens) for lift in the rotor. I either got it wrong today or it wasn't there, but I doubt a lower performance ship would have made it.

From Waaihoek it was gangbusters to past Dasklip. The big concern was not to stay out too late and as it went soft as the ridge got lower I decided to turn just before Piekeniers - a good call as it turned out because it felt like I got the last out of the Witzenberg on the way back - trickling along to make it climb, and on Waaihoek there was nothing - zero. I suspect another 15 minutes (the time it would have taken to do the extra 45km to Renosterhoek and back from the place I turned would have been enough to render the ridges unworkable.

So 680 OLC (720 track)km from a 13h00 start - we certainly had an afternoon of a 1000km day and made the best of it.