Sweden - WWGC2011 - Monday 20 June 2011

After the early day scrub yesterday, the Met Man said that he had ‘some small hope for tomorrow’ which we took to be in the positive.  At briefing this morning, the Met Man had a handful of Soundings and didn’t know which one to believe.  He said that he would go for ‘the least optimistic one’!

An Assigned Area Task was set for all classes with a minimum distance of 152km and a maximum of 260km to be completed in 90 minutes.  Two areas were North of Lake Hjälmaran, two on the South side and a control point to bring us in on the airfield; none of the areas were larger than 12km radius.  And ‘Oh by the way’, said the Director, ‘there is no landable field North of the lake all the way up to the airfield’!.  ‘There was a cry of outrage from more than one Team Captain!  It would mean that the Club Class would have to fly in excess of 100kph in order to complete the task successfully, AND there would be a straight glide of approximately 30km with no possible lift and certainly nowhere safe to land.  ‘The Briefing is closed’ said the Director, and that was that…

So with the glider already on the grid, I programmed the LX and Steve programmed the IPAQ and we waited for first launch at 11:30 as I was on the front of the grid.

Then there was a call on the radio ‘Would all Team Captains please meet at the front of the grid at 12:00’.  Following the re-brief, Mel handed to us our new tasks sheets.  The Task Setter had shifted some of the assigned areas further to the East so that we would be flying back over Lake Hjälmaren at a slightly narrower point and the overall length was now a minimum of 124km and a maximum of 226km.

By now a huge storm had built upwind of us and the sky was growing ominously dark.  All of a sudden there was a call on the radio ‘the Women’s World Gliding Championships has been cancelled for the day’.  It was a scrub.  I was surprised as it was only 12:20 and perhaps the storms would pass through and it would be OK on the other side.  As it turned out, they were right to scrub; there were thunderstorms and the sky was completely washed out in all directions around us.

It meant a leisurely lunch. Fran chilled out; Helen completed her blog, (or was it Raz the mascot?) whilst Jo ate smelly fish and cold Baked Beans!!!