Open flex wing results, Rigid wing results, Sport Class

Blogs from here: Jonny Durand, Jamie Shelden, Tom Lanning, Ben Dunn, and Linda Salamone

7:27 PM: Dustin Martin upset the World Number 1 flex wing pilot, Jonny Durand, beating him decisively, on the last day, as well as on day 2, 3, and 4. Jonny won the first day and Dustin was second, far behind him (1:17) on that day. Dustin, Jonny, Sunny and I flew together (more on that later), and Dustin beat Jonny into goal by five minutes. He was already leading going into the last day.

10:10 PM: The forecast was for 96 degrees on the ground with a heat index (due to the humidity) of 101. The winds were supposed to be 6 to 9 mph out of the west, with a little bit of north in it. We chose a 36 mile task to the east southeast for the rigid wing and open flex wing classes and a fifteen miler for the sport class in the same direction.

I got off second in the open class after Jim Prahl. One sport class pilot had launched but he landed. There was a wind dummy that was no dummy and had circled up from very low. I launched a half hour after the launch window opened at 1:45 PM. The first window would be 2:30 PM and the last start window at 3 PM.

The sky was milky white. Visibility was about two miles. There had been one cu overhead for about two minutes. But, Jim was sticking, so why not get out of the heat and get up.

I held on to 1,750' and pinned off when there seemed to be some lift. There was and it was enough to hold on to. A few other pilots launched but basically I had the air to myself as Jim was low below me. I could only climb five hundred feet or so before the lift petered out. The wind was light so it was easy to stay near the air strip.

After half an hour Konrad and Charles Allen joined me and we drifted down wind a ways getting to 2,600', but decided not to go on the course as it would have been just Konrad and I. Also, there were now two small cu's formed a mile back toward the air strip so we went back to them. The lift continued to work and the top of the lift continued to rise. Now I was still on top of everyone and at 2,800'.

I saw Jonny below me heading out for a cloud at the edge of the start circle. We still had almost fifteen minutes to go before the last start window but the lift had stopped where we were so it was time to get under the clouds.

I kept my eye on Jonny and Dustin as we climbed up to 3,200', the highest so far and waited for the start clock. We were able to stay up at this height and get the clock in good position.

 I headed out with Dustin, Sunny, Jonny and Tom Lanning. We found a good thermal just outside the start circle and we were all hanging together. When it slowed down I decided to run out in front in an attempt to leave these guys behind (the visibility was poor, so maybe I could lose them). There were plenty of clouds in front of me to mark the lift and these were the guys I needed to beat to move up in the contest ranking.

In five miles I found a good thermal at 1,700' and spun up to 3,700', but when I looked up there were my boys hanging out with me as always. They had gone out of their way to find me and now they were above me.

I got high and raced out in front again, going for nine miles this time and down to 1,500' but when I looked up there were Sunny, Dustin and Jonny just above me. I climbed to 3,200' but this time they were able to stay 300' above me and now they headed out first. I had to trail them.

They found a couple of thermals to the east southeast by Milford and that kept us going. After the second one Jonny headed southeast while Dustin, then Sunny, then I headed east to a nice cloud over the parkway.

We all climbed to over 4,000' while Jonny glided down to 600'. We were in a convergence zone looking at the coast line a few miles to our east. When we left this thermal, one after another, we had lots of lift going to goal. Jonny was down below struggling to get back up.

Jonny had made a move to get past Dustin but it didn't work out for him.

The last day:

The over all results for open flex wing class: