Strange strange day. Ended up making an early afternoon dash to Witchie when skies suddenly brightened and wind backed towards south. Only short-lived and back to westerlies with big cloud build up threatening rain as I passed Benger. Arrived at Witchie just after Gerald & Garry, and breeze was back to nice and straight onto the south face. Hmmm.
First clues came with ground handling - not a day for sleeping, easy to get yanked vertically way up in the air. Wing overhead it was desperate to fly (more then me!) so I followed it and got a real rock and roll ride. Quite good fun really but pretty tasty and some really stong pockets of lift at times. Best lift was right in front and over take off and had fun scraping and scratching across to the SW bowl and back with no real lift along the way.
Graham arrived with Ruth who was hoping for a tandem, so I flew back to land and just couldn't get down as it was so lifty. Big ears, (small) wingovers, turning away from lift - nothing got my feet back on ground until I tried a combination of all three and even then it was a struggle. I had noticed it getting stronger and sure enough as the clouds arrived the winds picked up and put us all on the ground - and that was the pattern for the rest of the day: strong gusty conditions as the clouds rolled through followed by very short windows of flyable opportunity.
So a short flying day but a grand day out all the same.
