St Andre-les-Alpes at the end of summer is one of the best places in the world to fly. It was a rare pleasure to spend a week there with Matt, Przemek, Mike, Bob, Ben, Seb, Jonni and Paul before staying on for the British Open the following week. For the first week, we had great conditions and flew 7 XC days in a row with several trips up to St Vincent and back for some. The whole team flew really well. Thanks to Stu for the loan of the Mentor 2 - it took some getting used to but definitely helped gaggle cohesion.
Back on my Enzo 2 just before the comp, I had a lovely XC day out with Guy and Adrian out past Digne and then down to Moustiers at the mouth of the Verdon gorge but I got careless and got flushed on the way home. Racing gliders in St Andre is deep play and it was great fun to learn a bit more about just how good these gliders are at speed in big air. I managed to cross the line first by one second in one task but lost out on the win due to lead out points. It is hard to get many lead out points when you have an appalling start and are in about 90th place one thermal after the start ;-)
After it was all over, we went for a midnight fly down under the harvest full moon and I hit mild valley convergence over the lac and had to work to get down. Ooooaaaawwwoooohhhh!
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| Bob M on top of Coste Longue on a St V OR trip (Matt saw a wolf trotting along near the summit later) |
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| Adrian above Moustiers with the Verdon Gorge ahead |
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| Me, Ronnie and Adrian. Pic by Lawrie Noctor |
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| Turnpoint 1 on Task 1. Pic by Lawrie Noctor |
