I decided to rest my sore back (too much heavy lifting around
Wilotree Park) but Mick Howard and John Simon decided to go north but late at
2:20 PM. At 10 AM the sky was full of ill formed gray bottomed (thin) cu's with
light cirrus overhead. The cu's stayed that way all day.

Michael Howard <<mickhoward100>>
writes:

Cloud base was predicted to be around 5000’ and with the expected
southeast winds we were hoping to fly a little further than previous days. 
However the sky didn’t look so inviting as the surface heating felt weak and the
clouds, though fairly high, were flat (thin) and not well defined plus we didn’t
like the wind gusts and direction which seemed to have a lot of easterly
component.  We waited around until after 2 PM hoping conditions would improve
but apart from the wind gusts backing off the sky looked less inviting that
earlier, so we agreed on a shorter task to Leeward.

Rich, Tiago, Kinsley, John and I were set up and John took the first tow around
2:20pm.  Bobby hauled me up next and was turning under a weak broken cloud
(there wasn’t much else there) and I pinned off around 2100’ in zero lift.  I
headed over to slightly better looking clouds east towards Osborne Field and
took a climb to 3300ft.  John had gotten off tow at 1400’ in zero lift and I
watched him digging himself out from 700’ over the swamp east of the field.

I was undecided whether to go on course as the day didn’t feel or look very good
I wasn’t sure if John or was going to land and if I would be the only one to
leave.   I punched upwind, which was varying between 9-14 mph, to another cloud
in the weak broken street.  John was now just north of me and low but he was
still in the game to I decided to drift on course taking the climb to 3900’.

At 20 km out I was down below a 1100’ struggling to find a climb with poor
retrieval areas ahead when I found a climb that turned into 500 fpm up that
carried me to cloudbase at 4800’.  John had managed to get high and was heading
my way and I was hoping he would catch up to me so we could fly together.  I was
announcing all my climbs but John was around 10 km behind on about the same line
5 km west of the course line.

The clouds up ahead over the west side of the Villages looked tired and thin but
there was nothing else.  I had plenty of altitude to make landing zones as I
passed the Villages and found my last climb around at 3:40 PM which carried me
to 3800’.

I went on glide searching for lift and changing course slightly to hit what
appeared to be hot spots but the day was over.  John announced that he was
setting up for landing which I was about to do after first trying one last
attempt to climb out with 30 or so vultures circling low over the corner of a
cattle farm.  Down to 350’ I was still hoping for a low save but despite flying
over the vultures I didn’t find a lick of lift so I landed 9 km short of goal in
a nice empty field across the road from the cattle at 4:05 PM around the same
time as John.

I had a lot of encouragement from across the road as I broke down my glider:

I almost didn’t fly on this day and then I almost didn’t attempt to fly the
task, but it turned out to be a very enjoyable flight.  Staying in the air and
making miles in weak conditions is very rewarding and flying cross country in
January is amazing – just needed one more climb to make it to goal.