Killarny Comp, Day 5

We raced up to the north launch today to try to beat the thunderstorms. The sky looked less threatening than yesterday, but once on launch the nice clouds started to mushroom straight up again... The wind was light and everybody had their wings out, we were going to race these clouds out of mountains and onto the flats.

The course was a 60 km task that went downwind past Killarney, jogged back into the wind going north of town, turned south with the goal at the rec center in Killarney. Base was pretty low over launch, about 2000 meters, and there was a lot of shade so the lift was light but we got away from the mountain range and onto the flats. The clouds were marking the lift and big ears were coming on to keep as high as possible without getting sucked into the clouds.

We were closing in on the first turn point but to our dismay a very large black cloud had parked near it and lightning was shooting out of the base as it dropped it's load of rain.... So the tasked was stopped, and we will score the race up to ten minutes before they called the stoppage.

Back at the rec center, which is the race HQ, it started to rain, and then it poured, and then it dumped, and then it deluged, and then the flood gates opened and with the wall of water the gust front came blasting through... A bunch of people are camped in the grass field at the rec center, which is now underwater. Lots of lightning and thunder. The power was out and the scoring will have to wait, but no one seemed to mind too much because there is a bar in the rec center stocked with heaps of cold beer.

Two Japanese pilots decided to entertain the rest of us by running around in the down pour with no shirts on while making funny noises and waiving their arms in all directions, it was very funny and quite spontaneous...

Stay Tuned