Saturday Soaring

[SA]

The Eagle crew is holding a thermal clinic this weekend, and we were hoping for the thermal block today. Our crew got to the Skyport launch after walking the LZ’s to found light cycles from the South. Art, Andy D., and a few others pushed off and climbed out nicely at launch before heading to the factory. We had most of our crew get up at launch and then make the play for the RH spine. Things started to overdevelop a bit, but we managed to get everyone off. We rallied to the Chicken Ranch and picked up some food to go. We were hoping to time it right, and arrive back at launch to find the sky opening back up. We arrived at the Skyport in the clouds, but it opened up nicely for us in 10 minutes time. It wasn’t working at launch like it had earlier, but people were getting it out front. Pilots in our group were doing turns until 4:45pm, and Brad Gunnuscio who is in town helping with the thermal clinic after teaching some SIV for us last week had his first flight to the beach here. We will be doing a classroom session at 8am tomorrow then heading up to the mountains again if we get the block. We had 17 mph winds out of the north Saturday morning, and the thermal block set up nicely. There is north wind in the forecast for Sunday, but I am hoping it blocks again. I believe things will dry out a bit tomorrow, and we wont see the overdevelopment we saw today. We just need some heating to push back the north wind.