Official Practice Day 1

Things are getting serious now. Suddenly there are teams, gliders and tow planes everywhere. The flags have gone up on the flag poles and as the gardeners have been working dawn till dusk for the last week so the place is looking very spik and span.

Today's task was a 505km racing task for 15m and 526km for 18m and Open. Grid allocation by place and class has not started yet though, so gridding is organised chaos and its a case of launch and start when you want as start gate open times aren't happening yet. So some pilots are flying the task seriously and some are still just fooling around getting systems sorted and fine tuned. As Lisa is the only crew here at the moment she had the unenviable task of removing and retrieving wing walkers as we launch and as myself, Brett and then John all launched in quick succession she was kept on her toes.

Lisa driving the Team NZ VW Caravelle