Flight

It looked like conditions would be better later in the day so I worked in the morning and arrived at Bo Peep at about 1:00 p.m. The wind seemed lighter than I'd expected so I rigged as quickly as I could, worrying it would die off completely.  Then Luke pointed out the sea breeze front getting ever closer and it was a mad dash to clip in, do final checks and launch.

There were weak thermals about but they seemed to break up about 800ft or so ATO so I spent quite a bit of time ridge bashing, trying to get up in the scrappy lift and watching the SBF, although very poorly defined, edging ever closer.  There were clumps of curtain cloud dotted about under big blackish clouds but more cumulus behind on the seaward side. It was a bit hard to fathom exactly where the convergence was.

But as I saw one of the clumps of curtain cloud drifting towards us from in front of take off, I headed along the ridge towards the Trig Point to turn and head back to meet it as it arrived near the ridge.  I was fairly quickly and smoothly hoovered up, doing big wide circles, to roughly 2,000ft ATO, from where I headed out towards the reservoir, following the convergence line as well as I could make it out, keeping far enough away from the front to just maintain zeros and 1-ups.  I lost the lift before the reservoir but had enough height to glide the last kilometre or so, turn and get back to the ridge where the wind had veered a bit more easterly but there was still enough lift to soar a while longer and make a top landing before the sea breeze took over completely.