We're sorry, we are experiencing technical difficulties, please try your flight again.

The title pretty much sums up the day for both Chris and I. Brett dun good yesterday and was fourth to cross the line.

There was a whole slew of weak link failures yesterday. Glen Volk came off the dolly, broke a weak link and cartwheeled on the ground. He was 2 ahead of me in line. So I had to wait for them to "clear the wreakage." He didn't break anything and was fine. Then the guy in front of me did the same thing! More "clear the wreakage" time. By the time I finally finished my tow, I was all alone as if I had been the first to launch.

My tug pilot dropped me off at exactly 2000ft. I really didn't think anything of it as I was in a thermal climbing slowly. At about 2500ft, I noticed that there was a guy 200ft above me, still on tow, still climbing...

We had nearly 45 minutes to kill before the start time. The radius was only 5 miles. I sat on the boarder at cloudbase for 20 minutes. I decided that I would take the early start today. With all the debacle with weaklink breaks, I couldn't find Brett or Chris in the air. I heard over the radio that they were going to take the second start. Hindsight tells me I should have waited. They used the markers from the first start and caught up in no time.

I unfortunately got very low after the first turn point. Before that, I was flying out in front with Nene and Phil and a few others. It was a completely different feeling to have a glider that performed as well as what those guys are flying. It made it "easier" to keep up. I guess the pace got too fast, I got low. Grovelled for about 30 minutes trying to get out of a hole. Crazy thing was that the day was so good that I did my final glide from the last turn point straight into goal. 20km away at 5800ft or a 11:1 glide. My instrument was telling me that I would come over goal at 230 ft at best glide given the current wind.

Chris on the other hand had a different issue. When he checked his vario/gps combination yesterday morning, it said that it was 1/2 full of power. Well, we are guessing that it was 1/2 full on the backups. Just before the first turn point, it went dead! Chris then had to basically follow people into the turn points, or at least what he thought would be a turn point! The whole time, he was also wondering whether he had turned on his back up!