Mittwoch, 23. Dezember 2015

22. Nov. 2015 - Cabo Paquica


 

 

 

From my landing at Cuya, yesterday evening, I took the first available bus to Iquique and arrived there around midnight. I used a taxi to change bus terminals and around 1am I sat in the night bus to the south. Arriving around 4am in Cabo Paquica I went up the mountain to sleep at the road for about 2 hours, right above the tunnel, next to the well known tunnel launch. As soon as dawn is breaking I wake up by strong, wet winds. My bivouac tent as my sleeping bag as my gliders pack is like after heavy rain. The wind is so strong, that you could soar up to a higher take-off, I think. But visibility is poor and if the wind is that strong at that time, will it be flyable later in the day ? Will my efforts during the night just be in vain ? I hang my wet gear over my glider pack and walk up to 400m asl. Here the winds are even a bit stronger, vultures are soaring in a horizontal way, the scenery is some kind strange. I eat something and then I decide to use the favor of the unrealistic situation for an early start. Now the wind is still startable with a stall-depowered glider, maybe in an hour or so it won't be any more. I start and the sinking begins. The strong wind against the ridge and the M6 and I cannot soar ? Not even can keep the ridge altitude ? No ! I just sink and loose height ! ooh "chchch" … Some minutes later I am on the ground, some hundred meters lower. Yesterday I flew 300 kms+, the night I spent on the buses, I walked up the hill, I am more or less completely done and now that ! I pack my gear and walk up once again, because I cannot image, just to go to the street, stop the next bus and ride it back to Iquique. Walking up I more and more realize, that it is really not a good day today, especially not after this incredible day yesterday. Back up at the 400m take-off-area it seems to me, that despite strong winds there is still no lift ing component in this current. The vultures just soar, no one of them is thermalling anywhere. So I wait until I get more confident and see the first vultures not just soaring back and forth. In the air, soaring and keeping altitude is manageable, but gaining additional altitude still is not. So I fly away low, being prepared to enter a bus as soon as I am back on the ground. But the lower altitudes are lifting well and flying low seems not a to big problem. Just when I fly higher, at a certain height my glider gets like blown away from the ridge into lower territory. Very strange, frustrating and exhausting flying. If I would be over town, I would have been long time on the beach, next to coffee or ice-cream. After the border of El Loa it becomes a bit more regular with condensate building on the usual places and somewhere after Rio Seco it turns into completely overcast. From here it is calm flying, but still lower than usual. As I enter the area of Iquique town there is almost no uplift anymore, anywhere. But I know the late places and so I can fly back and forth between Punto Cruz and Baja Molle once more, before I use, what I think one of the last soft upwinds to start my flight out over town to the Playa Cavancha. Really not that, what I wanted to do today, but still 200km+ on a lousy day after the best day in years.