| Flight details: | New PB from Selsey Common at the BCC.
Very light winds and very busy made getting away pretty challenging. After a few very sweaty walks up the hill I saw someone climbing over the trees to the left of the hill. The climb was very sharp edged and had to really give it some to get into the lift. After a few turns was joined by others and it got a bit busy, but I climbed to around 1000'. After this the climb slowed down and having drifted over the back a bit I was checking pilots on the hill climbing faster than me. Suddenly John Turazack found a really strong bit of core and this was the signal I needed to come back to the hill. Took that climb with a litte gaggle right up to cloud base at around 4k.
Had a bit of a bimble then a bit of a climb and then spotted some gliders downwind climbing well. I decided to try a full-bar glide, while John and another pilot on a Delta 2 (?) adopted a more conservative speed. Initially it looked like the glide had paid off as I arrived at the climb much earlier, but after a few turns the climb petered out and I ended up low and pretty desperate, with John and the other glider much higher. By this point we had top cover and spreadout, and things weren't looking good. John marked a climb by a solar farm which I eventually made it to very low, and after a lot of hard work, re-centring and patience I finally got back up to base, comfortably high enough above Womad festival to enjoy some great views.
With all the top cover I was going very slow and stopping in basically everything. The flight was pretty tiring, with weak broken climbs the order of the day and lots of time scrabbling low. At one point I caught up with John, and we had a few turns together before he outclimbed me a little. I stopped in another zero while he headed on to a 2nd solar farm, which gave him a great climb. I chased across to him, pretty low again, and found a bit of a climb. With a lot of patience, searching a re-centering I kept working the broken clim |
