The winds were twenty knots out of the south at the southeast facing Bald Hill just north of Stanwell Park. Curt had a full day of tandems ahead of him (and it looked like a great day for tandems) and I wasn't all that excited about the high winds, which looked to me like they might prevent cross country flying up the escarpment. After an hour of helping others off, and the winds calming down the slightest bit, I set up behind Alex, the Brazilian pilot from Forbes and the Bogong Cup.

With a couple of wire people, including Belinda, it was so easy to launch and immediately get high in the super smooth air. Curt was already on this fourth tandem.

I quickly headed across the gap in the Airborne C4-13.5 and arrived quite high on the cliffs to the south of Stanwell Park. The next jump was over Coalcliff and wasn't nearly as easy going straight into a head wind. I arrived low on the cut just above the Lawrence Hargrave Dirve, pushing into the wind that was going up the hill and making it back up. The strong winds produced string smooth lift but made going south slow.

After playing down on the escarpment I came back to try zipping back and forth across the gap. Down below there was a rescue helicopter on the beach at Stanwell. Only two hang gliders were in the air and no one was launching. The helicopter was about to take off.

I flew over Bald Hill and out of the way of the helicopter and down in the water I saw a hang glider under water and attached to a float and being pulled by a small rescue boat. It appears as though a Victorian hang glider pilot who was known to fly at Bright (Mystic Hill) had landed in the water. Apparently he had flown to the north (in the strong south winds) after launching from Bald Hill and not been able to make it back to the beach LZ at Stanwell Park. It was not clear why he landed in the water and why he had not just landed in the makeshift LZ's to the north, when it was clear he wasn't going to make it back. It also wasn't clear why he wasn't in lift.

The pilot was rescued and his glider retrieved (broken up). He apparently suffered minor injuries.