Al B's photo of me in front of launch
Eventually I got myself over to the Buchaille and pimped off Brian S and Gordon M who were just below me but a strong inversion just over the top of the mountains was causing a lot of divergence and there were only poor climbs to be had and it was very hard to get close to the summit. Chris C climbed up past me working it better and joined stewart d to chase bob down towards the aonach eagach. I watched them go but it seemed very sinky and after some rough top up climbs off the little buchaille i headed down glen etive. About here i found one of the straps on my harness was 4" slacker than it should be and my feeling of discomfort with the handling of the wing and the rough air suddenly went away!
Having spent about an hour on one hill with divergent flow causing poor lift on the windward face I then did exactly the same on the big lump on the S side of Etive about 5 k down the glen. Giving up on my down-soaring i was suddenly behind a spur and committed to rounding it on the S side via a hanging valley that joined up with Starav outliers.
Clearing a small col by 5m I worked a zero in a totally shaded coire until i had enough height to run to the huge vertical wall facing the met wind. But met wind seemed sheltered her7e and dulled down by the shadows and there was nothing. Soon there was nothing for it but to run for a landing NW back to the main Etive valley where i emerged only a 100m or so above sea level.
Al B's shot of glen etive. He was a lot higher than me - I went down the side valley on the left well below hill height
Sometimes you make up the reason for the existence of a thermal more in hope than reasonable expectation but for once this time it was spot on. A 5k or so drift of cold air helped me out of my cold shady corrie and led me down over the warm sunny main valley floor and suddenly I had beeps. Fifteen minutes of peristence later and I was above the Etive slabs / Ben Trilleachan at 5500 feet feeling a whole lot better about the day.
From here I had straight forward clouds to push for down the N shore of Loch Etive and could see the sea breeze front ahead. It was fun to play with when i got there with great views out over Mull. I thought about trying to return to the coe but wanted to play more with the convergence at the sea breeze front. It looked very weak however with a wavy line stretching to the south and only occaissional wispy clouds with big gaps. Looking down i saw that the windmills at the Taynuilt wind farm were still facing W to the sea but most of them had stopped (means the wind is <5 m/s) so the sea breeze was definitely weak as well.
david t's shot of the sea breeze front, oban and mull behind. I landed just out of shot to the left
For the next hour I went into survival mode eventually quitting on landing right in the middle of roadless moors and managing a glide to a still rather remote landing in scammadale just past oban. By being nice to the kids and rather posh woman who came out to meet me i got a lift 5km down to the road and pretty soon was eating fish and chips on the harbour wall in Oban
