saturday

[diablo]

I well be picking southside up at Bailard at 8:30 and will be passing thru Parma by 9:00 if anyone needs a boost from those 2 locations

[Southside]

GFS was saying fairly light boundary layer winds out of the NE all the way into Santa Barbara, so the idea going into the day was to go after the Out and Return record held by Sundowner on a PG(perhaps disputed - more later). Tom tagged Twin Peaks so I was hoping to go out to at least Boyds. That was the idea anyway. But driving to the meet spot at Bailard I could see that the wind was blowing through the Pass at a pretty good clip out of the east; loading up we talked about going the other way instead. Maybe a flight to Santa Ynez Peak then back to Whiteledge and then back to my truck.

Tony launched first. Not getting anything at launch he headed over to the Holy Hills where he caught a thermal that drifted him all the way back to the Thermal Factory. I was thinking, hmmm, SW, maybe we should go for our original goal. By the time that I got suited up Tony was already eastbound.

There were already two PGs working the TF by the time that I launched and so I didn't bother to try to work something near take-off. Found a thermal just west of the TF and then fudged over to the main spine. There I worked a few bullet cores before giving up and heading out to the AF. At the time I was really thinking that I might want to call it a day. My radio wasn't working and so I had no idea what kind of air Tony was flying into down range. The strong cores above the Factory had me a bit spooked. But the thermal that I found just before the AF ended up a lot smoother so after topping out near 5k I headed out on course.

Nothing really at Montecito Peak, but I still had enough altitude to come in above the road cut at East Romero. There I locked into another one of those bullet cores. If things didn't smooth out farther down range I was just going to land at my truck. But it did get better east of Castle Ridge so I continued on. And it was pretty easy going -- I don't think I got below 4k until my glide over to Twin Peaks from Nordoff.

At that point I was cold and tired so I wasn't going to fly all the way to Boyds before turning around. I'd tank up at Twin Peaks and maybe glide over to West or East Repeater and then turn around there. However at Twin Peaks I ran into a low level NE that blew me off the hill (Tony got over there much higher and didn't have the same problem on his way to Santa Paula). I was forced out into the valley and so I made TPs my turn point. I was still above 3k so I was able to loop back to Three Stooges where I got enough of a skip to make it back to Nordoff comfortably. By that time Scott Angel had joined me after tagging Three Stooges himself.

At that point Scotty went back into the mountains whereas I stayed out front. We both got up nicely just short of the 33. The Fusion climbs well enough but it just can't keep up with the other topless gliders; on our race to Bump Three it wasn't even close. But like I said, it does thermal well so I was able to catch up again. This time I angled back to the back ridge while Scotty headed more to the frontside of Whiteledge. He found a nice one about half-way there so I headed to join him. The thermal drifted us back to the back ridge just short of Whiteledge. I think we got to just over 6k. Both of us stayed on the back ridge on our way through the Pass. The west wind was really starting to push through at that point. At West Divide I left a little lower than Scotty and it cost me. Whereas he was able to fly above Noon, even gaining altitude while gliding, I had to limp around the face. And then it took awhile to finally find something that would allow me to continue.

At that point, I was really hurting. Tired, sick, sore, you name it and flying against a headwind. At Castle Point I was less than 7 miles to goal and at 4500 ft. But as I came into East Romero I started sinking like a stone. Rather than fight it, I decided to turn around 5 miles from goal and land at Balaird next to my truck. The flight ended up being 60 miles total - 29 miles out, 24 miles back, and 7 miles to the truck. Scotty ended up leaving East Romero for East Beach. He too was tired of fighting against the wind, but I'll let him tell you.

John

Re Tom's out and return record. If I'm not mistaken Tom turned around at Twin Peaks too, but didn't actually make it back to launch, although he did land at Parma (I think he flushed off of Parkers). Should this be recognized as the out and return record for SB?