Tanoy and text this morning indicated that the briefing would be delayed until 11:00 again as the day dawned overcast and menacingly dark. We were asked to put the gliders on the grid before briefing. By 11:00, only a fraction of the grid had been assembled in a kind of mutinous response.
At briefing, the Met Man stood up to a round of ‘hissing’ from the competitors and proceeded to describe a very unstable day, low cloud bases, heavy showers and increasing winds…. More shockingly, the organisers had actually prepared a Task A and a Task B for each class! At least we had placed our glider on the grid, although still in its covers, but I couldn’t bring myself to programme the LX7007C as I didn’t really believe that we’d actually be flying.
We commenced the ‘grid-squat’ seated in the warm in the caravan with a cup of tea listening to the aircom radio. At 13:00, the call came that ‘first launch would not be before 14:00’. By 13:30, all classes had been scrubbed with a proviso added ‘please de-rig your gliders and tie down your trailers’. The forecast for Thursday is heavy rain and increasing winds, and for Friday, storm-force winds. I have never been to a competition briefing before where the Director has hinted that the next 2 following days may also be scrubbed early in the day.
We towed the glider to the trailer and removed the still wet covers and de-rigged it (with kind assistance from the new BGA Chairman Pete Harvey). In preparation for the strong winds, we elected to leave the Land Rover at Lasham hooked up to the trailer to prevent it moving in the anticipated winds.
What a week this has been!
So where are all the positives today? Well nothing else has broken down/ stopped working/ gone flat/been immersed in rain water, so that has to be good. Plus as a bonus, I can go into work Thursday and Friday and claim back two of my vacation days!
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