Worlds 2007, Day 4

I am staying with the New Zealand team and last night we watched the most spectacular lightning show I have ever seen. The whole eastern sky was on fire with bolts of lightning - multiple bolts would fire off simultaneously from different directions. The night would turn into day, and layers of the monster cloud advancing towards us would be illuminated. If we didn't see a flash for 3 seconds, it was unusual and we braced ourselves for the next series of monster bolts and accompanying thunder.

At the north end of the wall of cloud was a cloud we nicknamed the "giant mushroom cap" - it was advancing around the end of a low hill and coming at us. The cloud was so thick and black that the lightning could only illuminate the small gap between the ground and the flat bottom of the mushroom cap. It looked particularly sinister.

Our house is on a deserted hill top and so we were sitting in the middle of the street feeling the thrill of being in the "front row". It started to rain, and so we went inside, it was about 10 pm. A few minutes later the gust front hit - the winds must have been 45 knots, as the power went out briefly a few times.

This morning the storm was still there, with more thunder and lighting! The day was put on hold and cancelled around 1pm.

We also have the first protest of the race - yesterday the task was set up to have no departure or arrival points, but even so, first place should have been worth 1000 points instead of 858. What I think has happened is the scoring software is calculating departure and or arrival points but just not adding them to the distance and time points, hence the low score. If they fix it, no ones position will change, but everyone will get more points.

Yesterday I was watching gliders coming into goal, and for no apparent reason, I saw a wing stall about 30 meters above the ground. The wing surged and started to recover, then it did a helicopter, another surge and then the pilot hit the ground hard. The ambulance was parked at the LZ so they got him stabilized quickly. It looked like he was too deep in the brakes, not sure why. I wish him a quick recovery.

Results can be found here.

Stay Tuned